This month, the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health will make the seasonal transition… to meeting in-person again! And speaking of seasonal, the big presentation of the month is going to be about bugs, the one’s that spread dangerous and life-threatening diseases. Also, there will be some annual reporting involving injuries and vaccine waste, plus some new reporting about rabies and a life-saving community service.
NOTE #1: This meeting will held in-person at the Chancellors Way offices of Public Health, but there will also be an option to attend virtually.
NOTE #2: To get the link to attend virtually you will have to send a request to join the meeting via an online form that you can find here. Deadline to send in the request is Wednesday April at 11 am.
NOTE #3: The meeting begins at 2 pm.
MOH Update(s) – Medical Officer of Health Dr. Nicola Mercer will deliver her verbal report on current matters facing Public Health.
PRESENTATIONS:
Vectorborne Disease Update 2023/2024 Planning – See report below.
Vaccine Wastage for 2023 – Last year, Public Health distributed a little over $8 million in vaccine supplies to various community partners around the region, and about 3.1 per cent those supplies ended up going to waste. Protocol requires that the a public health authority have vaccine wastage at five per cent of less before the Ministry of Health starts asking questions. Now, this stat does not include the COVID-19 vaccine, and last year the rate of wastage for those vaccines came in at 28.4 per cent. All 239 refrigerators used by Public Health for vaccine storage were inspected last year.
Vectorborne Disease Update 2023/2024 Planning – In other words, this about planning for mosquito and tick season. Last year, though there were no human cases in the region, public health found three mosquito pools with West Nile Virus, and as for ticks, the number of the blacklegged variety went up last year after dipping in 2022. The rate of Lyme disease infections in this region are down when compared to the cross-Ontario average, but the trend is still going up with 20 new cases last year compared to 17 in 2022. Monitoring is underway for this year when it comes to ticks and mosquitoes and they’re developing new programs to further their efforts since climate change is having a direct impact on the size and potency of these insects and the diseases they carry.
Injury Surveillance and Prevention – Every year, the Board of Health is provided with an overview of injury-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and mortality information for the region. Our rate of injury-related emergency room visits is higher than the overall Ontario rate, ranking 10th overall among the 34 public health units in Ontario. In the whole region, the most common type of injury that leads to death is a fall at 45 per cent of the time, the second is intentional self-harm, and accidental poisoning is third. By age, 90 per cent of accidental deaths involving people 75 years and over involves a fall, while the highest accident type for people 45 to 64 is self-harm with 45 per cent of injury deaths being attributed to that cause. Several different programs and community partnerships are part of an ongoing commitment with public health to reduce all types of injuries.
Adopting the Quality and Impact Performance Framework – Obviously, public health is constantly measuring the effectiveness of their programs, but how often do they review the process of measuring that performance? In 2023, public health undertook a review of their performance measurement strategies with the goal to make tools simple, practical and flexible, plus reduce the work load on staff and increase the visibility of their accomplishments. This new framework is designed to take people through a series of four questions that is meant to help them understand the goal of program, what public health is doing, whether they’re making a difference, and how they can do better?
Rabies Program Benchmarking Project – Rabies is kind of a big deal because it can be fatal if not immediately treated, so it’s probably pretty important to know how good public health is when it comes to reacting to a report of rabies. (Not so fun fact: There were 841 investigations into rabies exposure last year, which is not as high as it was in 2019, but the numbers have been increasing every year since 2020 and it’s likely COVID-shaped dip.) Public health performed a review of their internal processes when it come to rabies, and while the review found the program well run while meeting all the requirements for the Rabies Prevention and Control Protocol, but they still identified six areas for improvement. Some of these are pretty straightforward like annual reviews, more communications, better tracking, and the development of an online reporting porthole and dashboard.
Naloxone Distribution – With drug poisonings on the rise in the region, the distribution of Naloxone is an important part of the public health strategy to prevent deaths caused by those poisonings. Public health has been a part of the the Ontario Naloxone Program since 2017, and they provide both the injectable and nasal spray Naloxone kits to public health, who, in turn, hand them out through their own community partners. Last year, there was a slight decrease in the number of kits handed out – 3,087 in 2023 versus 3,599 in 2022 – but public health says that’s because there are now more accurate methods to distribute the kits.
Artificial Intelligence for Enhanced Public Health Outcomes – The Board of Health will be asked to add their endorsement to a resolution brought to the Association of Local Public Health Agencies by staff members at a couple of different public health authorities, including our own. This resolution is asking the Ministry of Health to look at ways that artificial intelligence can by used to help delivery public health programs and services and increase academic investments into areas related to A.I. As previously reported, WDG Public Health presently using A.I. to deliver its interactive chatbot to answer clients immediate, frequently asked questions on the public health website.
CLOSED SESSION:
The board will meet in closed session to hear the verbal report from the Human Resources Committee. Since this is a matter of “labour relations or employee negotiations, and personal matters about an identifiable individual, including BOH employees,” the board gets to invoke Section 239 of the Municipal Act.
Guelph Politico 