Aging and Disability Network Meeting Minutes 1/12/16

Aging and Disability Network Meeting Minutes 1/13/16

Attendees: JoAnn Zales (National Grid), Jennifer Baldwin (Saratoga Hospital), Josina Warnow (SAIL), Mary Rickard (Saratoga County Office for the Aging), Kym Hance (Alzheimer’s Association), Diane Martin (Wesley Evergreen ADS), Jess Flynn (Eddy Daybreak ADS), Kathy Leonard (Eddy Health Alert), Donna Rudzinski (Shenendehowa Village), Sharon Emerson (CHOICES St. Peter’s), Karley Votraw (Saratoga Senior Center), Ellen Egger-Aimone (Fresenius Dialysis/Private Care Manager), Maria Geizer (Home Instead).

Attendees introduced themselves.

Mary Rickard announced that the next meeting will be held at St. Edward’s Church, 569 Clifton Park Center Rd, Clifton Park. Katiria Romero and Caitlin St. George from Visiting Nurse Service of NY will be speaking about changes in the MLTC program.

Today’s Topic and Presenter:

An Overview of Saratoga County Public Health, presented by Priscilla Wheeler, SPHN, Prevention Supervisor, Saratoga County Public Health Nursing.

Public health is the science of protecting and improving the health of families and communities through promotion of healthy lifestyles, research for disease and injury prevention and detection and control of infectious diseases.

Overall, public health is concerned with protecting the health of entire populations. These populations can be as small as a local neighborhood, or as big as an entire country or region of the world.

Public health professionals try to prevent problems from happening or recurring through implementing educational programs, recommending policies, administering services and conducting research – in contrast to clinical professionals like doctors and nurses, who focus primarily on treating individuals after they become sick or injured. Public health also works to limit health disparities. A large part of public health is promoting healthcare equity, quality and accessibility.

Saratoga County Public Health’s mission is to assess, improve and monitor the health status of our community.

Some services offered through Public Health:

Certified Home Health Agency (CHHA) - provides what is commonly known as “visiting nurse” services, as well as physical or occupational or speech therapy (PT/OT) in the home, "home health aide" (HHA) services, and medical supplies.

Early Intervention – serves children up to the age of 3 with a disability or delay in 1 area of development. The Early Intervention Program offers a variety of therapeutic and support services to eligible infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, like OT, PT, Social work, and speech pathology are just a few examples.

Prevention – promoting education for communities around prevention of AIDS/HIV, TB, STDs, for example.

Emergency Preparedness: Since September 11, 2001, public concern about the use of biological and chemical agents by terrorists has caused us to become familiar with a new word: Bioterrorism. Even though the intentional use of biological and/or chemical weapons is possible, it is not very likely since these agents are difficult to produce and difficult to disperse effectively.

Public Health personnel, in addition to medical and emergency personnel, are intensively trained to be alert, prepared, ready, and able to respond to these potential threats. Public Health emergency Preparedness is in place and is constantly being strengthened to assure our ability to deal with emerging infectious diseases, as well as chemical attacks. The Public Health System – Federal, state and local – works jointly with numerous other organizations to prepare for such threats.

Public Health also has in place prevention education, and treatment resources for communicable diseases such as STDs, TB, Hepatitis, AIDS/HIV and others. They get daily reports on all that are diagnosed in the county and they follow up on all of them.  Any disease that could be weaponized and be a potential threat to the population is considered high alert.

Other prevention programs run by Public Health include programs about Lyme Disease, Rabies, Lead Poisoning Prevention, Maternal Child Health, Physically Handicapped Children’s Program and Child Find (for babies meeting high risk criteria). Their role typically involves support, education, treatment, prevention, and hooking up families and individuals to various resources throughout the county.

For more information on what Saratoga County Public Health has to offer please call 584-7460 or go to www.saratogacountyny.gov