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By the numbers: The many hidden ways public health impacts the community

Public Health Sudbury and Districts recaps 2019
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Public Health Sudbury and Districts presented their 2019 year in review to board members on Feb. 19, highlighting the multitude of services they provide to the community. (File)

Public Health Sudbury and Districts presented their 2019 year in review to board members on Feb. 19, highlighting the multitude of services they provide to the community.

Highlighted in the report were more than 12,000 publicly and non-publicly funded vaccines administered by public health nurses, excluding influenza and school-based vaccines, more than 40,000 doses of seasonal influenza vaccine distributed and more than 5,400 client visits to the Rainbow Centre PHSD office.

The four pillars that were focused on in the year in review were clinical services, corporate services, environmental health and health promotion.

Penny Sutcliffe, medical officer of health and CEO at PHSD spoke highly of the health unit's diversity and ability to touch so many members of the community in the past year.

"We impact so many lives in so many ways at so many stages of life," said Sutcliffe. "What always strikes me is we're a backbone in our community and we reach out to other organizations and agencies and help build their capacity as well."

Measuring outcomes can be difficult for the health unit, she said, as they have a very wide breadth of coverage, and public needs change from month to month and year to year. For example, the health unit distributed 1.45 million needles this year as part of their harm reduction strategy, which was down from 2018.

The health unit did, however, see an uptick in the number of inhalation kits that were given out (11,710).

"Contributing factors to the decreasing number of needles is you see the number of inhalation kits going up; where you have one modality seeing an increase you'll see a decrease to another," said Dr. Ariella Zbar, associate officer of health.

"Drug supplies also differ from year to year, so when you have more longer-acting drugs in the community it requires fewer needles."

One statistic from 2019 that caught the attention of Sutcliffe was that 138 Sudbury students were charged for vaping or smoking at school.

Additionally, nine charges were laid for smoking or vaping on hospital property, 32 charges were laid for smoking or vaping in the workplace and four charges for vaping or smoking in a public place.

"Vaping has really got everyone's attention as it relates to respiratory illnesses that are still there, even though we're not hearing about them as often," said Sutcliffe.

Public Health Sudbury and Districts is not equipped with the personnel to be out providing enforcement on vaping and smoking, and Sutcliffe said that the education side of things is where they factor in.

"We don't have that many people who can be out doing the enforcement work, so we need arms and eyes out in the community who are calling us to ask us to come and help out," she said. "So I think that's really putting it on people's radar and they're part of the enforcement net.

And that enforcement net can have an impact, she said, even if the health unit is out on the street doing direct enforcement.

"It's similar on the tobacco side, where it's all about the education and ‘denormalizing’ so that people are enforcing it themselves," she said. "It really is about changing norms so that people are making good decisions for themselves."

Vaping is still a relatively new issue for Sudbury's health unit and health units across the country, and Sutcliffe said that some of the concern lies with the fact that a lot of younger people are getting into vaping not as a means to quit tobacco, but because it's marketed as "cool."

"Certainly in the UK they've seen evidence that vaping can reduce your addiction to tobacco and nicotine, but that's not really how it's evolved in North America — it has really attracted a generation of younger people," said Sutcliffe.

As well, there is still much that is unknown about the long-term impacts of vaping, she said.

"We're less aware of what the risks are and still have lots to learn about those risks, and also as a potential gateway to tobacco," Sutcliffe said of those who use vape without using the device to quit or cut their tobacco use. "Overall it has greater risk to the population than benefit, except for those who are using vaping as a means to reduce their use of tobacco."

The health unit is on the frontlines when it comes to water safety in Greater Sudbury as well, inspecting the city's drinking water and beaches to ensure they're safe for consumption and leisure.

In 2019, PHSD issued 43 boil water advisories and one drinking water advisory. Nine blue-green algae advisories were issued in 2019 while PHSD inspected 33 beaches weekly. The health unit also inspects the city's pools, spas and splash pads, and six pool and spa closures were ordered in 2019 through nearly 200 inspections.

Public health also has a role to play when it comes to the opioid crisis that has hit Sudbury. Last year, the health unit issued four drug alerts in an effort to prevent overdoses in the community. In 2019, 2,276 naloxone kits were distributed to individuals by eligible agencies, and 2,224 people were trained to administer nasal spray naloxone.

The entire Public Health Sudbury and Districts 2019 year in review can be found here.
 


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