Pittman and Friends Podcast
Welcome to Pittman and Friends, the curiously probing, sometimes awkward, but always revealing conversations between your host, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman - that’s me - and whatever brave and willing public servant, community leader, or elected official I can find who has something to say that you should hear.
This podcast is provided as a public service of Anne Arundel County Government, so don’t expect me to get all partisan here. This is about the age-old art of government - of, by, and for the people.
Pittman and Friends Podcast
Dr. Tonii Gedin on Leading Anne Arundel County Department of Health
Dr. Tonii Gedin, Anne Arundel County's Health Officer, pulls back the curtain on what actually happens inside a health department with over 800 employees. What begins as a friendly conversation quickly transforms into a masterclass on modern public health approaches that save lives every day without most residents ever realizing it.
Dr. Gedin's path from ICU nurse to health department leadership reveals how public health work extends far beyond what most citizens understand. Through her straightforward explanation of the department's five bureaus—covering everything from school health to environmental protection—we gain insight into the vast scope of work happening behind the scenes to keep our communities healthy.
The conversation tackles several critical health challenges facing communities today. From the department's innovative approach to gun violence as a contagious disease (complete with gun locks in libraries and safety information at gun shops) to their groundbreaking work reducing overdoses by 32% through harm reduction strategies like naloxone vending machines, we see practical solutions making real differences. The Community Health Ambassadors program demonstrates how trusted messengers from within neighborhoods can bridge cultural gaps and connect vulnerable residents with life-saving resources.
Most compelling is Dr. Gedin's candid assessment of what truly drives health outcomes: not just medical care but housing security, food access, safe neighborhoods, and walkable green spaces. "Your health takes a back burner when you have to prioritize your basic needs," she explains, highlighting why addressing social determinants remains the most powerful path to healthier communities. This eye-opening conversation reveals how public health works at its best—quietly solving problems, saving lives, and building healthier communities by addressing root causes rather than just treating symptoms.
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Welcome to Pittman and Friends. The curiously probing, sometimes awkward but always revealing conversations between your host, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman - that's me - and whatever brave and willing public servant, community leader, or elected official I can find who has something to say that you should hear. This podcast is provided as a public service of Anne Arundel County, so don't expect me to get all partisan here. This is about the age-old art of government of by and for the people. Welcome everybody. I am here today with my friend, Dr. Tonii Gedin, who is the Health Officer of Anne Arundel County, the head of the Department of Health. Welcome.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Glad to have you here. So, health department. Some people just go snooze when they hear that. Some people actually have a political reaction when they hear that, believe it or not, which is sad. But tell us, tell our listeners, what the Anne Arundel County Department of Health is, the scope of it. We'll talk about some of the bureaus. Maybe it's bigger than most people think.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It is bigger than most people think and we do a really wide variety of things, which keeps the work interesting and exciting, but also unpredictable. We're broken out into five different bureaus: school health services, behavioral health services, family health services, services disease prevention and management and environmental health, and then we have a host of administrative staff that do different things within the department. But those five bureaus is really where a lot of the work is happening.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And how many people overall?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, so there are over 800 staff members within the health department.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, wow, and then they're divided. Some of them are state employees, officially correct in Summit County.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Absolutely so. We are a hybrid agency. We have county employees and state employees, and that makes for interesting HR. But, it's a challenge that I think we welcome, and it gives us an opportunity to really have a variety of positions and people doing the work within the department.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So you're really integrated with the State Department of Health.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We are. We're an arm of the State Department of Health. We are an entity that helps to regulate a lot of State Health Department rules and things that we have to follow, and also meeting with them and using other jurisdictions as tools. Right, they are helpful to us. They're partners in the work, so finding out what's working in other places, but also coordinating with the Maryland State Department of Health, really helps our work quite a bit and they're great partners in this work.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Okay, okay. So I want to ask about you next. I'll just say that you're a sort of quiet and mysterious person to me, and then when you open your mouth, it's like oh my God, she knows everything. And we'll talk about how we met, how you came in, but tell us first what got you into public health and then what brought you to this job.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, so I am a nurse by training and I started my nursing career as an ICU nurse. Really loved that and wrestled with.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Was your mother, also a nurse?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:My mother is a nurse.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:I remember hearing that.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, my mother.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:I come from a lot of nurses. There's a bunch of nurses in my family. We all do really different things but it is kind of the family trade, if you will. So out of nursing school, went into the ICU, loved that, and I had had just a little exposure to public health between my junior and senior year in college, doing a program with Hopkins abroad, and I went this is interesting. Let's see what happens.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:And I decided to pursue a degree in community and public health nursing at the University of Maryland and did that still while being an ICU nurse, and then left the ICU to work in a federally qualified health center, managing kind of a two-part job where we talk about having multiple hats. I was managing a cardiovascular grant to teach people how to be safe in the community, working with community health workers.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Was that health care for the homeless? That was Baltimore Medical system.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yes, I started at Baltimore Medical system, uh, and also doing care management with really high risk individuals who had been in the hospital were patients of that health system and trying to help them manage their chronic diseases. To stay out of the hospital, and that progressed, stayed there for a while and eventually moved to health care for the homeless as their director of nursing and then as their first chief quality officer. So that's been my trajectory.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And that's a pretty big organization. I think a lot of people in Anne Arundel don't know it's a Baltimore organization, right?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yes, both organizations are in Baltimore.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And they've been around a while, haven't they?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:They have. So both FQHCs that I worked in are federally qualified health centers. Baltimore Medical System serves more, is the largest federally qualified health center in the state. So, they see. I don't know how many people they see now, but thousands across Baltimore.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And for people in FQHA, federally qualified qualified health. They take folks without health insurance, correct?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Absolutely. So. They're here to serve the most vulnerable populations underinsured, uninsured and then working in health care for the homeless, really specifically targeting individuals experiencing homelessness and that whole spectrum that comes along with that. So, focusing on social determinants, focusing on more than just the care itself, but how do we provide additional services? And thinking of housing as health care that was really my introduction to that, along with a lot of harm reduction work that they do in that organization.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:For people who are experiencing substance use. Absolutely Substance use. Yeah. So all that wonky stuff about social determinants of health, you actually have done it on the streets of Baltimore.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Absolutely yeah.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So exciting stuff. Where were you overseas when you did that with Hopkins?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, I was stationed in Cape Town, South Africa.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:South Africa, wow.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:And so we were looking at specifically why people were not taking women who had been sexually assaulted were not taking their post-exposure prophylactic medications. There's a high rate of sexual assault, and so I was helping some qualitative researchers doing the grunt work of reading these stories and highlighting any time they say X or Y. Your job is to highlight and then help us put that together. And I thought it was such fascinating work to better understand the reasons and the whys that people were or were not participating in this health care that seems so important. Why would you turn it down?
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And there was so many reasons that people didn't ICU to working in this area of public health. Can you just say what is the difference between public health and individual health? Because I think when people hear public health they don't quite. I think a lot of people don't quite know what that is.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, I think it is a little mysterious for people and I think of it as individual health care is looking at what you can do to improve your health, and public health is both what you can do to improve your health. But also what you can do to improve the health of those around you your community, your neighbors and that's critically important and something we have to explain to people why their actions impact others and what sort of interventions we can have that really help make the community overall safer and not just their individual health.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So for that to work, people really have to have a sense of community and empathy.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:They do, they do.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:And an understanding that we're all a part of a broader system together, that we're all a part of a broader system together. So things like your functioning septic system impacts your neighbor's groundwater and the drinking water for everyone. What's in our waterways right is important for everyone, even a vaccine which can both protect you personally but also can protect other people from getting a disease from you. Those sorts of understandings and kind of rules to live by are something that can be challenging when maybe you're not agreeing with your neighbors at the moment.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, yeah. So I will just tell you, when I came into this job as county executive, I thought about even. I thought even as a candidate running on public health the basic concept that government should be judged not on the size of its tax base or whether it can steal businesses from neighboring jurisdictions and getting them to build here, or that it really should be the health and wellness of the people it serves. And I know there have been some countries even that have sort of defined the way that they govern and certainly the way that they budget, based on that concept that really the health and wellness of our people is what matters. And it never really sort of took off for me as a political slogan. There are so many things that we had to work on, but it was one of them.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And I remember and I'll say that part of this was that my older sister, Polly, works in public health she's at GW and her husband's in public health, and so I get this stuff at family gatherings a lot and it always made sense to me. And then I knew that I wanted to have a way to evaluate legislation, even local county legislation, based on the health impacts of it. So we talked early on about doing health impact notes and statements and things to help us with that. And then when we were searching for health officer I wanted, I was very involved in that and very interested in who we found. We ended up with a search committee that we brought in people in the community to be part of and ended up with this guy named Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman, the name nobody could say and that's how we met.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:You right, that is how I came to be a part of the health department, interviewed to be the deputy health officer for public health at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic was really a thing in the United States just yet. Took that position and then started in May of 2020. So I do have Dr. Kalyanaraman to thank for this.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, yeah. So he came in, he got that job and I know he wanted to have you there and decided to be in the position that actually manages a lot of what the department does. So he. Well, he was a health officer during COVID. You were the deputy during COVID. You came in right at that time. I don't know if that was a good place to be during the pandemic or if you would have rather been elsewhere, but I guess I should ask you this question is: How did COVID change the world of public health in general, the field and your view of the work?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, I think it changed public health in a number of ways. I think it put public health in a spotlight in a way that people did not formally really understand exactly what we did. A lot of the things that we did on an amplified scale were things that we've been doing every day disease investigation, contact tracing, vaccinations, recommendations.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:God, I remember contact tracing, Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek. Yeah, Dr. Justin Marchegiani. I remember we were one of the first in the country to actually be able to do it. Until then, the number of cases grew so large that it was impossible to keep up. But yeah, Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Absolutely, and those are things that still continue within the health department, right. We have people who are trained to do that every day, but then it became a big scale and people what do you mean? You're telling me I should quarantine and I should stay away from people.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:And for us to do a lot of work to do on communications, right. Understanding what it is that people know about their health, what it is they understand about things like vaccines and why they're important, and that we could be better communicators - and that we needed to work with the community more, with their trusted messengers, to get our messages out and to explain in better ways, honestly, break it down, to be a little less sciencey and a little more approachable. So I think the field as a whole has recognized we've got some real gaps in how we're talking to people about their health that we need to work on. But also, I think it highlighted the importance of public health that we are silently working in the background a lot of times preventing things, and you don't know that we're there until something happens and then you need us and here we are. But that's important in that we're trying to keep that expertise up and running and going all the time.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Well, you say you should have done the communications better, but I will just come right out and say that well, first of all, I thought that the department did an extraordinary job of communicating. We even brought in consultants to help to do that. The one good thing about COVID was we did have federal support, even during the Trump administration. There was the CARES Act. People forget that major, major investments Act. But I will also say that people have an amazing selective memory.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:History has been rewritten, and unfortunately it was partly because it became a political issue and it was the right. I can say that right, left, right that said that this is a violation of our freedoms, that we're being told that we have to respect basic principles of public health, which are, you know, do things to prevent the virus from spreading.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:We had 1,137 Anne Arundel County residents die from COVID.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Our death rate was about half of the death rate of some of the rural counties, some of the counties that did not have such a strong Department of Health and maybe did not take as seriously some of the things that they could do to slow the spread of the virus.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So that would have been over 2,000 deaths in Anne Arundel County had we had the death rate of other jurisdictions. And you know, I talked to people about the situation we're in now and other crises and they do say that one of the things about COVID was that there were things that people could do. We could social distance, we could do the contract tracing, we could isolate to prevent the spread of the virus, first to our families, then to our neighbors, then to our grandparents, the elderly people who we really didn't want to have get it because they were so vulnerable, and people just forget how serious it was and how scared everybody was. So I wish that. I think the story has to continue to be told. In politics, it's considered bad politics to even talk about COVID because it reminds people of the restrictions and big government stepping in. But we saved a lot of lives.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We did, and the people at the health department, all of them did extraordinary work, working around the clock, seven days a week, untold number of hours, honestly and it took a toll. Right, and it's a toll, I think, as a health department and public health quite frankly in general we're still recovering from, right. Figuring out how to reinvigorate staff, how to work with the public now that they know a bit more about what we can do, and not everybody is receptive to hearing from us in different ways and ways that maybe they might have just ignored us before. Sometimes we don't get a positive reaction. So, how do you work with staff through that who have given a lot to try to save those lives and to do everything they can to protect the community? But they did extraordinary work, and I'm very proud to be a part of that team. I learned a lot from them. As a person coming new to a local government public health entity, they taught me a tremendous amount.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Well, yeah, so thank you to all of them. Absolutely, it is. When we talked before this, about we were going to have to bring out COVID. You mentioned PTSD as something that may be not a joke, but on the bright side of that, one of the silver linings is to me that people did come together and do some extraordinary things. There was federal support for doing some things that we hadn't done before. I mean, food assistance comes to mind as the first in the food distribution system that was created that had been needed before, and then the health ambassadors program. You did a lot of community health work as a result of COVID and it's still going on, so we can get into some of those things.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Let's jump onto a completely different it sounds like a completely different topic, but gun violence.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Okay, so before I took office, there was a mass shooting, Capital Gazette shooting, and the newspaper asked all candidates for public office to write an write an op-ed to the Capitol about what they would do to prevent future mass shootings if they were elected, and I didn't have a good answer.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So, I said I will convene a group of gun violence prevention task force and we did that, and actually Dr. Kalyanaraman came in in the middle of that process and helped to make it all make sense. He said this is a public health issue, and we're trying to save lives here and let's look at this like we look at other science and other health. So out of the prevention task force came within the Department of Health the gun violence intervention team, and they have been steadily doing the work, having the community meetings. The gun locks program came out of that in our libraries and then the violence interruption work that we have now located in some of our neighborhoods. It's very effective. We actually talked about that in a previous episode with the Palmers. So can you tell us a little bit about Anne Arundel County's gun violence intervention work and whether we're unusual in doing that?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We are a little unusual in that. We're definitely unusual in the state of Maryland, but I think it's starting to take hold and the State Department of Health is now also working on violence, which I think is fantastic. It'll give us more partners and more people to do this work with.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:But what we're doing within the department is really looking for evidence-based approaches to how to how to decrease gun violence right and a lot of folks ask why public health or what do you have to do with gun violence and when you're looking at injuries and deaths?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Our goal is to promote health and to promote people living longer, and we know that gun violence results in injuries and can result in death.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:And so really looking at what we can do differently and convening a number of different partners across agencies in the county right, we don't do this alone.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Both city and county police departments are vital to this work, providing the data on what's happening, helping us understand where we're seeing these clusters of violence and really treating violence like a contagious disease, right. Understanding that proximity to violence then means you are more likely to both be a victim and or perpetrator of violence, that there are patterns of spread. All of those things are true, just like you might look at some other communicable disease. And so, having us under, we need our partners to understand that what's happening and how we can, how we can do it do better in decreasing violence together. So things like our gun lock program, looking at really small ways of expanding things really quickly. Actually, that's been really popular with the libraries to give out gun locks to residents, thousands and thousands of them. Thousands. It was way more popular than we thought. We started with four libraries, again focusing on the data and going in places that had the highest rates of gun violence. And then it got so popular so quick.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Within a month or two we were at all the libraries in the county.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And then Lisa Rodvien on the county council brought a bill to them that was to require the Department of Health to have suicide prevention and safety information at all the stores that were selling guns so that people would be able to have that information put in the box with the firearm. And of course, we know that there was some opposition to that in the courts but that it's been upheld. But again, that's a public health strategy, right.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It is our behavioral health team both go out and provide conflict resolution and suicide prevention literature to all of the gun shop owners and folks who are selling handguns and weapons.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It's been really successful. We are able to get that literature out to folks, just to have a small. Here's where you can go if you are considering harming yourself, if you're running into a conflict. Here are some resources for ways to resolve that. And those small public health interventions over time and layering them one on top of the other no one thing is going to end gun violence. Small public health interventions over time and layering them one on top of the other right, no one thing is going to end gun violence. But we have to really think about a layered approach.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:So having more gun locks, having this literature out, having violence interruption programs, engaging the community in different activities and education things like extreme risk protective orders and making toolkits and things for people to understand how to use those resources are really all things that then lead to what we hope is a reduction in gun violence across the board, and not just homicides but suicides, which is something that I think is often left out of the gun violence conversation is suicide, yeah.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Most successful suicides, it's because there was a firearm that was available to make it happen.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:These things COVID, gun violence they're political hot button, they've become political hot buttons. But the work is so the opposite of political, because everybody, regardless of their political affiliation or whether they've ever even thought about politics. The number one thing they care about is their health and the health of the people around them, their family first, their neighbors, their friends. You know, further out you get maybe, the less they care. But it is so non-political. And so I believe that by continuing to do the work and pushing through even the ones that are hot button issues and proving that it's successful, that we get rid of the political. I won't use any bad words stuff, the political stuff.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:I agree with you, and people coming out to hear about exactly what we're doing, I think helps a lot in understanding that we're talking about things like safe storage, which everyone gun owners and non-gun owners- agree with that they should be stored safely.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:So we don't meet a lot of resistance where we think it may be highly politicized. Folks are just grateful or they hadn't thought about it and thought about the storage. Because I'm a grandparent and I don't have a child at home anymore, but my grandchildren come back and forth. Those sorts of stories are really helpful for us in deciding, ok, how do we move this forward? And then engaging other partners for us in deciding, okay, how do we move this forward? And then engaging other partners, so pediatric practices, who are seeing families and ask questions about do you have a weapon in the home now, having a gun lock, to offer them Same thing with other partners in the community that are giving those locks out. People are not resistant to that conversation and I think sometimes, because guns can be so politicized, people shy away from it a bit. But I think you're absolutely right. If we move towards it and talk about the things that we agree on, folks are open.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, yeah, One of the health issues that for some reason didn't seem as political, or was maybe more bipartisan, I should say, has been opioids and substance use disorders. And I know that the previous administration before me was a Republican administration, and the county executive was he really genuinely cared a whole lot about that and ending, you know, lowering the numbers of. In fact, he went into that work. Steve Schuh went into that work at the state level afterwards, lowering the numbers of overdoses and deaths. How are we doing on that work?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We are really making strong progress on reducing it. So we were talking today actually earlier today with the overdose prevention team about the rates of reduction. So we've seen. Oh, can I just say something that's really.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, the gun violence intervention team, when it was created, was modeled after the opioid intervention team. Am I wrong?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Nope, you're correct.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Yeah, a lot of the same agencies at the table. So sorry, I interrupted.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:No, absolutely. How are the numbers looking? The numbers look good.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We've had about a 32 percent decrease from this time last year in the overdoses that we're seeing in the county.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Wow, and that was a decrease from previous years, right? Has it been the last few years? Yeah?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We've continued to see a decrease, which is really exciting. We've also seen about a 13 percent decrease in the same time from last year in fatal overdoses. So thinking about overdoses both, as some are fatal and some are not, but we're seeing a decrease across the board, which is really exciting in the work that we're doing. But we do see differences in certain populations and so, acknowledging that and those health disparities, and how do we get similar results in other populations where we're not seeing the same level of decrease?
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Well, and that's like. So this whole debate over equity or diversity, equity and inclusion, should you separate out different groups of people and treat them differently to solve problems? And in public health, it's kind of obvious that you do, because you're trying to solve the problem and you're trying to decrease the spread. You're trying to solve the problem and you're trying to decrease the spread. So that's interesting that that's happening. But what are some of the strategies that you've been using? I remember when I first came in, the safe stations was a big innovation where people could go directly to the fire station or I think also the police station mostly fire but that now a lot of those contacts are being made in the community or through the warm line. I know that work has increased, but what else have we done?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Sure, there's a number of different interventions, and I'll start with talking about harm reduction a little bit, and that's really meeting people where they are and offering the services that they need.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:That day, everyone may not be ready to enter into a recovery journey on the spot but, you build those relationships and work with folks and we have peers and others within the department who are out every day really trying to engage people, have these conversations, provide them with resources to keep them safe, and last year we launched a vending machine effort and last year we launched a vending machine effort and the health to go. Vending machines have things like naloxone or narcan in them, free to the public. To make sure that if you don't have this life-saving resource on you and narcan they even have naloxone.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Really?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:They do. So. Those are the drugs that's used to reverse an opioid overdose right, hopefully, and so making sure that people have it in their first aid kit, right? You never know when people may be experiencing an overdose, and you want to be prepared. But getting materials like that out in places like vending machines, but also we have staff who spend a lot of time giving those materials out and also using other programs like our Community Health Ambassador Program and training people on what it takes to administer it. And we're seeing an uptick we have since we started tracking these things in 2019 of family members and community members delivering doses of those life-saving medications themselves right before EMS arrives. And, um, EMS is still giving out a lot themselves, but we think that's really helping to turn the turn the tables a little bit and what we're seeing and other materials.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:If you are someone who's using things like fentanyl test strips and xylosine test strips, so you know what you're taking, because we see and we know in working with our police partners that are part of the overdose prevention team that drug supplies aren't contaminated, and people may not know exactly what they're taking. So understanding if you're using.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:How to do that safely? Yeah, there's so much fentanyl now and everything that I would think it would be terrifying to be addicted and to be taking drugs that might kill you. Drugs that might kill you um, so, um. So I, and I know that's why it's harder to bring down the death rate as the as the strength of the drugs increases. Um, um, as far as bringing down the you know, the overdose rate, um, well, good, so I'm glad that we and I remember, during covet and and after that, um, watching those numbers because nobody was paying attention. Well, the public wasn't paying as much attention anymore to the opioid overdoses because COVID was there. So being able to continue that work while fighting against the virus was very impressive to me over at the health department. So you mentioned some of the peer work on the substance use area and you mentioned health ambassadors. I talked with the Palmers about violence, interruption, with peers hiring folks in the neighborhoods. So tell us about the health ambassadors and what they do.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Yeah, the community health ambassadors is a program that started during the pandemic to really outreach to communities that we were seeing with lower vaccination rates, right.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:So how do we get out into those communities and talk to them about the vaccines, provide accurate information and help them schedule an appointment? And so we really stood this particular program up for that reason but quickly understood that we could use these trusted messengers that are from these communities that maybe speak a different language, understand the nuances within the community, don't necessarily come as a government official out to talk to you about a number of different things. So that program has really morphed into not only vaccines but also into mental health, first aid and Narcan training, even weather preparedness, right, Making sure people understand what to do when it's really hot or really cold, what are those dangers. And it's been a wonderful partnership and tool for the health department to say we're going to train these individuals and then send them out and they come back and we talk about what they're seeing, what they're hearing. They do surveys to help us understand what people's biggest health concerns and social determinant concerns are.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:In general, I was really excited when, when you propose having them do the mental health first aid as part of it, because, um, you know, mental health challenges are so widespread and everywhere and while obviously they're not out there as therapists sitting down with people on their couch and doing treatment. They are making people more aware, destigmatizing, connecting people to resources, and probably making people just feel better about the fact that they're not alone, which is true. I think, also in the you know, in the overdose area, that in the substance use.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So building community that way. So, I am a huge fan of that work and glad that we're doing it. We're continuing to do it. We have a budget where I know you've made a request, and we won't talk about that. But, everybody will find out on May 1st what is in our proposal and then it goes to the council. But congratulations on that work and I also am very happy that folks are being hired to work in public health at an entry level as a, as a health ambassador, learning about these things and I really hope down the road to see some of those folks getting degrees and going into the field and doing more so that it's a career ladder.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Absolutely. We did a symposium last week with the community college Anne Arundel Community College and they have a public health track and public health work there. So, speaking to students, all of the directors from the department were a part of that panel to talk about the work that we do and really expose people to the career options within public health, because they are vast and it doesn't require a lot of.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It requires degrees, but not all of it there's lots of entry level positions for folks with high school degrees and ways to get trained. So we really hope that this is something that will be a springboard for folks and that they're being introduced to a world of public health and community health reasons and wells and all of that. That obviously is a huge part of keeping our people healthy, keeping everybody alive.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:So thank you for that as well. Let's close it up. But can I just throw a curveball at you and ask you if you could do anything, even at the national level, maybe global, to improve public health in the next 10 years? What would you do?
Dr. Tonii Gedin:Oh, wow. What's the key and I have a problem?
County Executive Steuart Pittman:If you have it.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It's going to solve all the world's problems, not just health problems, because what you do is so central to everything. It is, um, oh, this one's probably twofold, but I would say housing, affordable housing, and safe neighborhoods really make public safety. Yeah, these are the types of things that impact. When you think about those social determinants and when we look at the health of the county as a whole, we're not surprised with where we see people with the worst health outcomes. Right, it corresponds to areas with higher poverty levels, lower income levels, housing instability, food insecurity, all of those things. Your health takes a back burner when you have to prioritize your basic needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a real thing, and if you are worried about your housing, your blood pressure is maybe not your top priority and it's also going to run your blood pressure up as you're stressed about it. Yep, and so it's social determinants are the things that really change health outcomes.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:We can put a million fantastic doctors and nurses and everyone on the on the horn and teaching people things, but if you don't have the money to do the things that you need to do. If you don't have health insurance, if you don't have access to providers, it's not going to change the health of the community as a whole. And so, yeah, I'd say housing security, food security, safe neighborhoods, walkable green spaces.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:And I knew you'd have a great answer to that. I knew I was putting you on the spot too, but it's why it's so important and I'm so gratified that within, at least within county government, the agencies are not siloed. You're working with the Police Department on Public Safety all the time. You're working with Aaron Karpowitz on housing and the ACDS folks and all the agencies are working together, and the mental health agency and the Bureau of Behavioral Health within the health department. You all figure out how to cobble it all together, and so there's hope, there are solutions. They're there, right.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:There are solutions, we know what the problems are. We know how to solve them. We just have to have the political will and that sense of caring about one another 100%, and I'd like to just thank everyone at the Health Department.
Dr. Tonii Gedin:It's National Public Health Week. It is. This is our week.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:I should have known that.
County Executive Steuart Pittman:Happy Public Health Week to all the public health workers. In fact, I think I did know that now, and they said let's do Dr. Gedin during Public Health Week. Okay, well then, thank you for doing this. I'm a huge. I have a ton of respect for you, and what you do. We never even got to the part about how you ended up in the job. Basically, you were already running the department. Dr. Kalyanaraman left and you were the obvious person. Everybody wanted you in the job, and so here you are. So thank you for your service, and thank you everybody for listening in. And if you haven't subscribed already, I say it every week. If there's a subscribe button, you can touch it, and then you'll get notified of who the guests are coming up, and I hope you keep listening. Thank you, thank you.
