New Vermilion County Health Department Administrator, Prince Danso-Odei, says he is settling into his position. He presented a plan to the Vermilion County Board of Health Tuesday evening to re-organize the department. Dr. Danso-Odei says one thing he would like to do is create the position of Nurse Clinician/Disease Intervention Specialist. He notes that currently sexually transmitted diseases are not being tracked in the county….
{AUDIO: “It means we don’t know what’s going on there. We just depend on the state for the numbers that’s going on there. There’s what we call the Epic in the hospitals – that just records who comes in, is treated, and then goes away. But we should have someone we call the disease intervention specialist. Someone who will be able to track and see what can we do to help stop the transmission.”
Danso-Odei has been on the job as Administrator of the Vermilion County Health Department since November. He has met with representatives from both OSF Sacred Heart Medical Center and Carle and says he is looking forward to improving communications with them….
{AUDIO: “We are planning to work with OSF and Carle so that we can have (an) integrated system, where our system can talk to each other. And then we can be able to track what is going on in our area.”
The reorganization plan presented to the Board of Health would create three key divisions within the department. They are Environmental Health, Administrative Services Division, and Community Health Services Division.
