When I was contacted by the Post-Dispatch about an article on our public health department, I anticipated it would explore our role in making St. Charles County one of Missouri’s “Healthiest Counties” for the past eight years. Instead, the article (“St. Charles County cuts health services as nurses exit,” Dec. 20), contains incorrect and misleading information despite our attempts to explain the extent and purpose of our changes.
The article questions our new approach to sexually transmitted diseases. St. Charles County’s STD rate, as reported most recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is 50 percent less for chlamydia and 15 percent less for gonorrhea, compared to the St. Louis metro reporting area. Our new structure allows us to get clients a rapid answer, with the aim of getting people to treatment faster.
We are not facing the same issues as the rest of the Metro area, some parts of which have been at the top of the chlamydia and gonorrhea ranking for more than a decade.
Questions were raised about the number of vaccinations the department provides. Public Health will provide nearly 10,000 vaccinations this year, near the average for the last decade, but less than we provided in 2012 or 2016. In those years, we hosted clinics for the schools aiding parents in meeting new immunizations requirements adopted by the Legislature. In 2012, the law, for the first time, required the tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccine for incoming eighth graders. In 2016, the law added the meningococcal vaccine for eighth graders and high school seniors.
Any decline in our educational programs this year was due to maternity leave or low attendance, such as CPR classes that were canceled when only three participants signed up. We assisted all three in placement in other classes in the community.
Hope Woodson • St. Charles
Article source: http://www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag/article-about-county-health-department-was-misleading/article_c573a42e-fb71-58b6-80ae-f1cb2dff4dab.html