Linn County Public Health looks to add new positions to help serve community

LINN COUNTY, Iowa (KCRG) - The Linn County Board of Supervisors is set to vote on approving three new positions within Linn County Public Health during its meeting Wednesday, January 19th at 11am.

The three positions are Communications Specialist, Health Equity Program Manager, and Senior Environmental Chemist.

Dr. Pramod Dwivedi is the Health Director at Linn County Public Health. He says the desire to hire a Health Equity Program Manger goes back a year and a half, when the Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis in the summer of 2020. It cited more than 100 studies linking racism to worse health outcomes for people of color.

Dr. Dwivedi says the position will work to help marginalized communities, naming chronic diseases, access to health care, and violence prevention in the community as possible areas of work for the position.

”We also need to start from within, among our own workforce and our own issues. So this position would be very critical for us to train our own colleagues as well as the communities at large,” says Dr. Dwivedi.

He says the Communications Specialist position will look to help distribute information to the public, elected officials, and others in a timely manner, saying the pandemic made the need for a position dedicated to that clear. They will also likely work to monitor and track information on Linn County Public Health social media pages.

Vacancy forms submitted to the Linn County Board of Supervisors show funding for the Communication and Health Equity Program manager positions would come from department reorganization. Funding for the Chemist position would come from the Fiscal Year 2022 budget.

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