MANSFIELD, Ohio – UPDATED – The Richland County Board of Health announced during its regular meeting on Monday that there will be a delay in filling vacant board positions.
Dr. Daniel Burwell attended his first meeting as acting health commissioner.
“Thank you for your confidence,” said Burwell to the board on Monday. “Hopefully this is a very short interim commissionership and everything gets settled with Martin and his wife.”
Chairman of the Board of Health, Dr. Janice Reed, noted that the board is going to hold off on permanently replacing the two board member positions pending further discussion about possibly reducing the size of the board.
Editor’s Note: When Richland Source published the story Tuesday morning, Dr. Reed’s remark indicated that the board was delaying hiring a new health commissioner. The reference was actually related to the board members, not the health commissioners.
Board of Health President Janice Reed responded with the following statement: “The Board of Health’s position has not changed. Dr. Burwell is the Acting Health Commissioner position until further decisions are made. The Board of Health will not comment on the subject pending the resolution of Mr. Tremmel’s legal matters.”
New format: school health data
In other news, the Board of Health heard from Peggy Sutton in the nursing division report that school health data will be presented in a new format. Sutton explained that in addition to reporting the working hours of Richland Public Health’s various school nurses in the county, the data in the future will also reflect the results of the nurses’ work.
“It’s more inclusive of what is happening in the schools instead of just hours worked,” said Sutton.
The new school health data will report students’ different types of medical conditions attended to by the nurses, including allergies, diabetic children and seizures. Sutton stated in the past year there were 539 cases of asthma reported in schools, and 1,200 cases of diabetic care.
“Except for a few districts we don’t see daily, we have 12,460 contacts with students by our nurses in our districts,” said Sutton. “The superintendents can take this to their boards if there are questions of their hours, and they can compare year to year. We send this out to superintendents in our final report.
Members of the Board of Health remarked the new data is much more comprehensive, and paints a better picture of the lives saved by school nurses.
“This really tells us and the public what’s going on in our school systems,” said Reed. “School nurses help.”
