Marin County will use an $8.58 million federal grant to bolster its public health division over the next two and half years.
The grant, formally accepted by Marin County supervisors on Tuesday, is a slice of the $22 billion supplied by the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act to support COVID-19 testing and vaccination-related activities. The act was signed into law in December.
“Acceptance of this grant allows us to create fixed-term appointments for roles that will be crucial for our ongoing response,” Ken Shapiro, chief operating officer for the Marin County Health and Human Services Department, told supervisors. “We will have critical COVID response activities ongoing for years to come, not just months.”
Dr. Lisa Santora, Marin County’s deputy public health officer, said, “We will continue to have significant vulnerabilities until we see high levels of global vaccination, which are going to be very difficult to achieve in developing nations.”
Shapiro said the county will spend $6.89 million of the grant to hire 20 employees. Their salaries will be covered through July 31, 2023, when the grant ends.
Shapiro said that nearly $1 million will go to nonprofits such as Canal Alliance, North Marin Community Services and Performing Stars of Marin, which have partnered with the county in responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Santora said the new employees will take the place of county staffers who work in departments outside public health. These employees have been filling public health positions on an emergency basis since the pandemic began.
“We recognize that we are shifting into the summer wildfire/drought season, and the staffing support is no longer going to be available,” Santora said.
Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters said, “It is clear that at the local, state and national level we did not have the public health infrastructure in place that we needed. We paid a very large price for this. I’m glad we’re moving forward now to put that infrastructure in place with our partners.”
Among the new hires will be six public health nurses, three bilingual public health investigators, an epidemiologist, an information systems engineer and several administrators.
The new hires will be assigned to one of six groups: a communicable disease team focused primarily on processing lab results and notifying recipients; a contact investigation team; an infection control team for public education to prevent transmissions; a mobile vaccination team; an administrative team; and a public health emergency preparedness team.
Santora said that since the pandemic began, the public health division has been unable to keep up with its normal regime of contract investigations for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and other communicable diseases.
“We’ve had to switch a majority of our public health communicable disease team into our COVID response, which has left a lot of tasks incomplete,” she told supervisors. “We know that there is much work to catch up on.”
The number of Marin residents who tested postive for gonorrhea during 2020 dropped to 45, a 45% decline compared with the previous year; the number of positive chlamydia tests declined 31% to 202 in 2020. Santora said the lower numbers may reflect changes in behavior due to people sheltering in place and fewer people visiting doctors’ offices for testing.
Santora said the plan now is to have one communicable disease team handle test results for both COVID-19 and more common communicable diseases such as sexual diseases.
Supervisor Katie Rice said she would like to see some of the grant money used to fund positions at the nonprofits that are partnering with the county to do contract tracing and provide support to people who test positive, especially in non-White communities.
“It’s about relationships and trust,” Rice said.
