Public Health Work has Never Been More Important
“In the world of public health, so many of our days are spent working behind the scenes — preventing disease, protecting health and the environment, preparing for disasters — that we often say the best outcome is one that is invisible,” writes Lisa Peacock, a CHRT Health Policy Fellow and a Health Officer for the Health Department of Northwest Michigan. “But who could have imagined this? We’ve seen a pandemic before, we’ve seen natural disasters, we’ve seen terrorist attacks, but in our lifetime we have not seen a virus literally stop the world in its tracks like coronavirus.”
“Our public health work has never been more important. Hospitals are worried about their inpatient and critical care capacity, employers are worried about their employees, local government is managing critical functions, and the public wants to know what they can do to protect themselves and their loved ones. Now, instead of behind the scenes activity, public health is front-and-center, the subject of almost every conversation across Northern Michigan, and everyone asks, “What can we do?” Without a cure and without a vaccine, the most important things we can do are to practice the age-old public health principle of social distancing and abide by the governor’s order to stay home whenever possible…..”