Washington County Public Health and Emergency Management are collecting feedback on their response and management of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to better prepare for the next possible disaster.
A public survey is available in English and Spanish for Washington County residents to identify areas of improvement as well as strengths to be maintained and built upon in advance of the next emergency. Former Public Health Administrator Danielle Pettit-Majewski says that while her department already had pandemic and vaccination plans before COVID-19, the pandemic and its length stressed them, “There’s not a lot of detail or nuance in these plans and so thinking about how do we schedule clinics when we know that we’re going to have different phases? The fact that we had a two-dose vaccine instead of a one, the fact that it was very specific, we had a finite amount, it made things more challenging than we had even prepared for.”
Emergency Management Coordinator Marissa Reisen says the feedback they receive will be used to influence what happens at a state level, “We’re working on our legislative priorities so what do we want to push legislators to implement, to change? So if we can get results that say, it was really hard for people to do this, this, and this, and there’s something that a piece of legislation can help that we can push for? Now is the time to be doing that.”
Reisen mentions that one of the state emergency management association’s priorities has been to enact a tax-free weekend for emergency preparedness supplies. The information collected in this survey will be put into an After Action Report for the county.
You can find links to the survey below. You can also give further feedback by emailing mreisen@wps.co.washington.ia.us.