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“I believe it will be a major mistake to not fund the Nursing Division,” said Dr. Tom Catalanotto of West Chester, who has been a pediatrician since 1976 in Hamilton, Fairfield and West Chester after training at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He also has been medical advisor to the city’s health department since 1978.
During four decades in that position, “Sadly, I have watched as the Hamilton city government has slowly decreased the budget and services offered by the health department from a large and vibrant group of dedicated health nurses serving a large population of patients, to the current, small group of public-health nurses who do an amazing job serving the citizens of Hamilton.”
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The nurses earn in the $50,000 to $55,000 range, and the city has had two full-time nurses for several years, Werdmann said.
Catalanotto noted the city performs surveillance, containment and prevention of diseases, including sexually spread ones. The nurses have recently been working to contain a hepatitis A outbreak, and battle yearly with the flu.
“I am frequently called by our nurses to provide prescriptions for medications for both minor, nuisance health problems, and also for more serious diseases,” such as strains of influenza, Catalanotto said.
“Hamilton is a city with many psycho-social-medical issues,” he said. “We have a huge opioid epidemic locally, affecting mothers, fathers, and their infants.”
“These are people who care for those who don’t know they need care,” Catalanotto said of the city’s public health staff.
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Werdmann said the city, like many in Ohio that have experienced state budget cuts, is looking at a tighter budget. Fewer cities are employing nurses, he said.
Shari Botts, a city resident who has been a registered nurse for 32 years, about 20 of them in the field of infection prevention and control, called such nurses “the unsung heroes that we don’t hear much about.”
During the 1990s, she served two years on the city’s health board.
“Our public-health nurses are vital to the delivery of essential public-health services for our community,” she said. “In these times when our health-care system is actually shifting from illness care and focusing more on health promotion and prevention, the role of the public health nurse is even more critical.”
“We need to be focusing on expanding and strengthening our public-health infrastructure, not cutting the very resources that are ensuring the well stay well, and the sick get better,” Botts said.
“They provide direct care for vulnerable and under-served populations, they respond to emerging public-health priorities, such as infectious diseases and chronic diseases,” she said. They also are “our first line of defense in responding to disease outbreaks, bioterrorism and disaster preparedness.”
“Community outbreaks are very real, and we currently have a statewide hepatitis A outbreak, and influenza season is upon us,” she said, observing that such nurses often are among the first to notice clusters of disease outbreaks.
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Bec Williams, a nurse, agreed with the others.
“I think about how we started this meeting today,” Williams said during the city council meeting. “We prayed for the safety of our residents. To fulfill that, we need a really robust nursing section of our public health department to ensure that happens….. They are the first ones that have eyes on, that identify when things occur.”
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