(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/20/2022) The Michigan Association of Local Public Health said members will continue to evaluate the future of COVID-19 and attempt to repair relationships at a local level after public distrust and politicalization hit a peak during the pandemic.
During a Tuesday morning year-end press conference, Executive Director Norm Hess said the Association is aware of the tension in local communities that started during the pandemic, and is looking forward to addressing and rebuilding relationships in 2022.
“It was very difficult for local health officers to have to say to restaurants; ‘You need to close to indoor dining,’” he said. "Schools, school boards and school administrators just had a horrible time when they were trying to focus on education. They already had a very busy plate, and now it’s difficult for the health departments to say you have to follow these mitigation measures.”
Discussions between schools and local health departments were very regular at that time, but “I think that in some cases there was just inevitable strain between local governments and the very hard choices that health officers had to make,” Hess said.
As for parents, masking requirements and vaccine recommendations led to distrust in some cases, in part “because of the politicization, because of the disinformation,” he said.
“I would say that there is a decrease in the trust among public health,” Hess said. “Just like any other government agency in the last few years, I think that it's a common thing that folks have had less trust in the government now than they did a few years ago.”
Hess said that has in turn led to a decrease in childhood vaccinations and an increase of individuals requesting waivers.
It’s important to address and educate individuals on what local health officers do, he said, “and the fact that putting a mask on your child to send them to school is not the reason that public health was invented. Nor is it the major function that we provide.”
“Not saying that any of those relationships are in shambles, but we just want to make sure that we are cultivating those relationships and making sure that they're on solid ground as we go forward,” he said.
In some ways, the rebuild will come naturally as public health officials are able to come out of crisis mode and focus more on other types of programs, Hess said.
But he added that touching base and communicating are also keys to rebuilding public trust and working through the politicization of public health.
The association is conducting a comprehensive after-action review on the pandemic response, that includes talking to emergency preparedness coordinators and public health officers, along with schools, businesses and health and hospital associations to learn how their role in the pandemic was made easier or more complicated.
Hess said the report will be completed early next spring.
Hess said it’s too soon to tell if COVID-19 will soon become a regular seasonal virus, but as the pandemic continues to become more manageable, he said the association plans to educate more on what public health means.
“There are still a lot of people who do not realize that public health has any role in clean water quality or restaurant inspections, and for maternal child health, making sure that mothers and babies have the care that they need,” he said. “Folks can kind of identify immunizations or infectious disease as something that public health is involved in, but it's so much broader than that.”
