Archuleta County’s Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee met on Monday, March 6 to continue planning the transition away from the San Juan Basin Public Health district. Both of the counties served by SJBPH — Archuleta and La Plata — voted last summer to dissolve the shared district and stand up independent health departments.
SJBPH will cease operations on December 31, 2023.
The decision resulted from conflicting political ideas about public health, that became amplified during the COVID crisis.
The two counties have taken slightly different approaches to the transition.
The Colorado Public Health Act of 2008 requires that local public health agencies must consist of:
- Board of Health that follows membership and appointment rules set out in C.R.S § 25-1-508.
- Public health director that meets minimum qualifications (in 6 CCR 1014-6).
- Medical officer that meets minimum qualifications (in 6 CCR 1014-6) if the public health director is not a licensed Medical Doctor (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO).
- Staff to accomplish the activities of the public health agency.
- Public Health Fund dedicated to accepting all public health funding and county contributions to public health activities.
La Plata County has appointed a permanent, seven-member ‘Board of Health’ to guide their transition.
Archuleta County, on the other hand, has appointed a ‘Transitional Advisory Committee’, but will eventually be required to appoint a ‘Board of Health’. The structure of that future Board of Health has not yet been decided. More about that issue in a moment.
La Plata County also hired a consulting firm. The Otowi Group, based out of Pine, Colorado, consulted with Adams County during the dissolution of the Tri-County Health Department last year, and the consultants began working with La Plata County in September.
From their website:
Otowi Group provides consultation services to public health agencies, nonprofits, state and local governments, and communities that are working to address complex health and social issues.
As far as I can tell, Archuleta County has thus far not engaged any consultants to assist with the health department transition, but they did distribute the March 1 Otowi Group report — created for La Plata County — to the Transitional Advisory Group.
You can download an abridged version of that Otowi Group report, here. (5MB)
You can download the full version of the Otowi Group report, here. (20MB)
Additionally, La Plata County is advertising for a health department executive director.
At the Monday meeting, the Archuleta Advisory Committee approved job descriptions for two different positions: a “transitional” executive director, and a “permanent” executive director. Those two positions will be advertised within the next week or so. They also invited three members of Archuleta County’s 2021 Health District Investigative Committee: Mozhdeh Bruss, Marybeth Snyder and Leslie Davis
That 2021 committee had looked at how other health departments in Colorado are operated, with the implied goal of making a recommendation to the Archuleta BOCC as to whether it made sense to dissolve Archuleta County’s relationship with San Juan Basin Public Health. The committee, however, completed its work in December 2021 without giving a firm opinion on the dissolution question, however.
The mere fact that Archuleta County was looking at the possibility of leaving SJBPH seems to have been the impetus for the decision by the La Plata BOCC, last spring, to withdraw from the health district partnership.
The 2023 Transitional Advisory Committee was provided a copy of the 2021 investigative study, and was able to ask questions of the three investigative committee members. Some of the discussion involved perceived ‘gaps’ in the public health services being provided by SJBPH during 2020 and 2021.
You can download the 35-page 2021 investigative report here.
One of the questions the Transitional Advisory Committee will be addressing concerns the composition of the required ‘Board of Health’. The Otowi Group report provided illustrations of three possible board structures.
The Transitional Advisory Committee is now posting their meeting agendas and meeting documents on the Archuleta County website, on the ‘Agendas’ page just below the BOCC agendas.