The Metro Public Health Department presented its budget requests and provided an overview of recent achievements and ongoing initiatives to the committee on May 14, 2024. Director Dr. Gil Wright led the presentation, followed by questions from council members covering topics such as animal control, community safety programming, family planning services, and behavioral health. No formal votes were taken; the session was informational.
Note: No agenda or minutes were available for this meeting; all information is derived from the transcript.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. As stated, I am Dr. Gil Wright. I am the director of Metro Public Health Department. And it's our mission to protect, improve, sustain the health and well-being of all people in Nashville and Davidson County. And with our team of just over 600 dedicated workers, we strive to do that each day. First, we want to thank the committee for our chance to discuss our budget requests today. The plan also included funding to design uh begin design on a new Metro Animal Care and Control Fility. There remains a long way to go on each of these projects, and we look forward to working with council and administration to complete these projects to ultimately help more Nashville's. We're also thankful for the support we've received to transition our clinical operations from paper to electronic health record, process we're currently working through. We understand the need to be patient as we continue to move forward in serving our community, and we remain excited about the future of our work. At the Metro Public Health Department, we love to talk about the things that we have done and accomplished, but even more important is those things that have not happened due to our efforts. Over the past year, a potential many meningiococcal outbreak was mitigated by an immediate response utilizing contract tracing and quick dispension dispens dispensing of medication to contacts. Routine restaurant inspections conducted by our team help prevent uh uh foodborne illnesses, and then services provided by our WIP team ensure fewer families suffer food insecurity, at least during the child's early years, with 22,000 participants across the program. More people are getting a healthy start for their early life. One of the most effective ways to avoid preventable sickness is through childhood immunizations, and our team works to ensure childhood immunizations are accessible to our whole community. Nashville remains at or above the statewide average for nearly all childhood immunizations, according to last year's 24-month-old immunization survey. All these are core parts of the work that the health department does, all of which are often measured by things that do not happen. We appreciate all that council approved for us in last year's budget and have uh some promising results to share. Over the particularly active flu season last year, our team administered over 4,300 flu shots with a focus on ensuring access to those who have historically seen poor access to health care. By adding a full-time community-based vaccine clinic coordinator last year, our team was able to bring vaccines to more people, eliminating potential barriers to health. At Metro Animal Care and Control, the addition of an animal behaviorist has been key in finding the right home for many adoptable animals that otherwise would not have been adopted. With more than 17,000 or 1700 adoptions celebrated over last year, uh we uh appreciate the work that's been done there. Metro's previous budget moved all of our interpreters from grant funding to local funding. This has freed them up to deliver more in-person uh interpretation services, often with a better experience and over-the-phone interpretation services. Our Nashville Strong Babies program, created initially to bring specialized services to specific zip codes where infant mortality was highest, is now expanding countywide as we've seen the need for these services broaden beyond the initial area. As we track data of where services are most needed, we adopt to the need to meet that. With the funding provided in Mayor O'Connell's budget proposal, we'll maintain our diligence to provide or to avoid potential outbreaks. Our areas of focus remain the same as they've always been, working upstream to prevent or reduce future health problems and eliminating barriers to ensure Nashvilleans can live full healthy lives. We'll continue our expansion of behavioral health and mental health services, ensuring we identify and fill gaps that exist in the local community of behavioral health and wellness needs. We expect another year of strong back to school back to class numbers, thanks to a large part by our talented team of school health nurses across Metro schools. Our sexual health center continues to prescribe and supply prep medication to those looking to prevent an HIV AIDS infection while offering affordable testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Our collaboration with mental health co-op, Metro Nashville Public, excuse me, Nashville Metro Nashville Police Department and Nashville Fire Department will continue through the partners in care and the reach programs, and our air pollution team will continue to work closely with the community to ensure our air remains healthy and safe to breathe with reminders of forecast uh air alert days circulated in ways that more Nashvilleans can access. We take our make mission seriously. We'll continue to keep the public's health and wellness front of mind in all decisions we make with the health department have fostered a great respect for much of the work done here at Metro Council, and we look forward to continuing the collaboration. We're looking forward to expanding our operations and offerings more services for the community in coming years. Thank you, Dr. Wright. I'm gonna kick it over to our public health and safety chair, Chair Evans, to see if she has any uh initial questions. Thank you, Chair. I've got, of course, several, as I'm known to do. Um so you can confirm REACH is officially funded for this comp upcoming budget cycle. Yes, ma'am. Okay, awesome. Um and then on Metro Animal Care and Call. So I know we this has like been an ongoing struggle, and I know it's a known struggle in the community too. And so I guess uh, you know, it's not something that's easily done this budget cycle at all because of us needing to remain flat. But what I guess is the vision on making some of those positions more appealing. I know we're uh we're competing a lot, you know, with private vets facilities and that kind of thing.