Florida Surgeon General John Armstrong plans to refine state health department communication policy based on the handling of Jacksonville?s ongoing tuberculosis investigation, criticized for the slow spread of information to the public.
Armstrong was here Wednesday to host the first in a series of monthly public health talks that will continue into 2013 throughout Florida. The inaugural panel discussion topic: crisis and risk communications in public health.
?Duval County was the natural backdrop because there were questions about how the Department of Health had communicated with this community related to the Duval tuberculosis cluster,? Armstrong said.
Armstrong culled three scenarios that will initiate public communication from the dialogue:
? U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports about emerging threats to public health.
? Notifying community leaders about how to best communicate health threats.
? Reaching out to focus groups to develop messages for threatened communities.
At least 14 have died since a particular strain of TB was first discovered in 2008 at Golden Retreat, a Jacksonville assisted-living facility.
The CDC in April issued a report pinpointing an increase in that type of tuberculosis among Jacksonville?s homeless and made several recommendations to the Duval health department on how to manage those cases. The federal agency gathered talking points for the county, but emails showed state officials decided the health department shouldn?t talk to the media about the outbreak.
Since then Duval administrators, including former director Robert Harmon, have left the department. Harmon retired in September following a Times-Union story that detailed the agency?s pattern of concealing information about the years-long outbreak. Armstrong made Bonnie Sorensen the interim director.
Efforts to open lines of communication have become visible in recent months. The state has designated two employees to handle public information requests, and Sorensen hosts weekly conference calls updating media on the ongoing tuberculosis investigation, which includes attempts to test thousands who may have come in contact with active TB cases.
Panelist Ken Covington, housing case manager at the Clara White Mission and co-chairman of Jacksonville?s TB Coalition, said media coverage didn?t accurately depict efforts to inform the homeless and volunteers at homeless shelters about potential threats to their health. He echoed the health department?s stance that those who need to know knew about the outbreak and that telling more people would have caused unnecessary alarm.
?What I observed and what I was a part of was a very orchestrated effort to bring together a large contingency of individuals,? Covington said. ?It really was a very large contingency from the outset that was informed and being engaged.?
Dawn Emerick, president of the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida, also was on the panel. She said she doesn?t have first-hand knowledge of how the health department handled TB communication. But any plan, she said, should be vetted and updated depending on the audience.
?This can?t be a one-size-fits all approach,? Emerick said. ?If you don?t have the (public?s) trust then your communications are not going to go anywhere.?
State Sen. Audrey Gibson advocated for setting up protocol that favors transparency and protects public health.
?When we release the facts then we enable individuals to be able to protect themselves,? said Gibson, D-Jacksonville. ?Please make sure that we are focused on getting information to the public, not suppressing it.?
adam.causey@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4025
tracy.jones@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4272
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