Public Health boasts century of contribution

In its 100 years of existence, the Lorain County Public Health has done a stupendous job helping to keep people healthy.

Lorain County Public Health also has another reason to celebrate because the staff will move into a new facility that is under construction by the end of November.

The health department was started in 1919 following the end of World War I while planet Earth still was reeling from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

Ohio, in particular, was haunted by memories of the 1917 small pox epidemic.

Lorain County Public Health Commissioner Dave Covell said it’s good to have that in mind when thinking of where the state of public health has moved in the past century.

Covell, who is the agency’s 12th health commissioner, said it’s also kind of humbling, because 100 years ago, the life expectancy was so much shorter than it is now.

As for the history of the health department, County Public Health official Talia Nadel shared a timeline.

Public health finds its roots in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 which killed more than 25 million people.

In response to the devastation of the disease, state Rep. William Hughes of Lorain proposed a law creating public health departments statewide. It passed in 1919.

The following year, the first Lorain County Health Department facility opened on the second floor of the old Oberlin City Hall and stayed there until 1956.

In 1926, the department faced its first epidemic when typhoid ravaged Wellington for about three months.

Unfortunately, Lorain County saw 156 cases of the deadly disease where the previous year there were only seven.

The epidemic actually was traced to a dairy farm employee, who was the carrier. And that led to an infected milk supply.

In the 1927-28 school year, the health department started a health program in schools pushing students to achieve health accomplishments. The healthiest school was treated to a silver cup at the Healthy Day Celebration in May 1928.

In 1934, the health department began its tuberculosis care program which seeks to catch the infections early when it is easiest to cure.

And the program still lives on in the Lorain County Tuberculosis Clinic.

Another significant milestone for the health department worth noting is in 1955 health officials began administering vaccines for polio, which is just one of the 18 communicable diseases for which vaccines are available.

Covell said vaccines are one of the biggest developments in the past century of public health. Small pox and polio were rampant in Lorain, the state and the country.

However, he said a small, sad part of that is even though “we almost got rid of measles, as people decided to stop vaccinating, we’re seeing those coming back.”

In December 1956, the health department moved its office from Oberlin City Hall to West Lorain Street in Oberlin to account for the growing department and county that it serves.

The office remained there until June 1967, when it moved to its current home on Murray Ridge Road in Elyria.

An addition was made to that building in 1980 and currently, a new facility is under construction behind that site.

Covell said the health department is expected to get the keys to its new facility at the end of October.

Back in 1975, the health department created adult clinics.

Three years later, the WIC department came to the county. In the first year, about 150 people took part in the WIC program, now the same program helps more than 5,000 people in the county.

Between 1986 and 1987, the health department attempted to get ahead of the AIDS epidemic by creating a task force that would combat the syndrome in the county.

The task force lives on as the HIV Peer Testers.

Two decades later in 2016, the health department had another milestone when it became the first in the state to be accredited through the Public Health Accreditation Board Standards and Measures Version 1.5.

In 2017, the health department grew even more as Lorain, Elyria and other cities in Lorain County merged their departments with Lorain County Public Health.

But even with all the good going on in terms of health in Lorain County, there is misinformation spreading.

Covell blames it on the internet.

Nevertheless, Covell said there still is a place for public health departments in the county.

After all, the mission of Lorain County Public Health is to create a healthy place for all to live, work and play by preventing disease in the community, empower people to make better choices and promote overall health and wellness.

And it has done that over the span of 100 years.