Amid politicization and skepticism, Montrose County welcomes a new public health director
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MONTROSE, Colo. — Montrose County is among the most medically vulnerable counties in Colorado. Approximately 30% of its residents are enrolled in Health First Colorado, the state’s Medicaid program.
The county’s new public health director, Dr. Mirza Ahmed, who previously worked in Somalia setting up vaccination clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic, believes his department is vital for keeping people healthy in rural communities.
Ahmed and the health department monitor diseases such as West Nile Virus, and provide information to prevent disease outbreaks. He says wearing long sleeves and cleaning up standing water are easy and inexpensive, compared to being hospitalized for West Nile.
In his decades-long career in public health, Ahmed worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund, traveling across the globe, often away from his family for long periods of time.
Besides wanting to work in a smaller community, Ahmed came to Colorado to be closer to his son, who recently enrolled at CU Boulder.
Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Ahmed at the health department in Montrose about his new position, and his response to the politicization of vaccinations and public health.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rocky Mountain PBS: How did you get interested in public health?
Mirza Ahmed: I'm a medical graduate from Bangladesh. When I graduated from the medical school, we needed to go to the internship program. I started my internship in pediatric work, pediatric means we treated the children, [and they] are victim of many diseases.
After six months of my internship, there was a big measles outbreak in our locality, and that brought hundreds of students to the hospital. It was not easy. The hospital was overwhelmed with the children.
Measles is a very dangerous disease and highly contagious. My professor told me that if there are no prevention activities at the community level, with the public, that is how far the condition can go.
What if we could vaccinate those students? They might not need to come to this hospital with complications, suffering and dying. So, the solution is very easy, it’s public health. Simple solutions like vaccines can prevent so many diseases.
The prevention is so simple, and if you raise the awareness, if you give the information to the people, it is easy to save lives. That really attracted me to come to public health.
RMPBS: What's the difference between public health in a rural area and in a city?
MA: The challenges are different in the rural areas versus the urban areas. Providing services in an urban area is much easier because a lot of people live in a single location.
But when people live in the concentrated areas, there are also challenges in terms of disease spread. More people live in a small area, it’s easy to get the diseases.
In the rural areas, people live scattered. [It’s] difficult to access because of the transportation. We think about efficiency, it’s not easy to have a facility for a few families. It may not be sustainable.
A rural area also has limited access to information, which is more in urban areas because people have more internet access. So, they may not be aware of the health issues they may be suffering.
RMPBS: What diseases are you monitoring right now?
MA: The measles outbreak ongoing in Texas, that is being spread over to New Mexico, also in Oklahoma this week. We are monitoring the measles situation at this moment.
We also monitor other diseases like West Nile Virus which is endemic in the U.S., especially this part. There are a number of West Nile cases. This is a dangerous disease, it can lead to encephalitis, meningitis and people may die also, especially the elderly population. They're vulnerable to that disease.
RMPBS: What else did you do before this job?
MA: Just before coming here, I was working in Somalia with the World Health Organization for five years.
I was leading the health emergency program in Somalia, bringing testing facilities, the isolation centers, bringing vaccines [during COVID-19].
There are other health emergencies in Somalia, especially because of the security issues, there are a lot of bombings. There is a lot of trauma and injury, so people suffer there. I was involved in the program to improve the quality of the health service providers.
We trained the paramedics, we also trained the hospital staff, so they are ready when the patient comes, they can be treated with the proper technical knowledge.
RMPBS: In the last few years, has public health become a more difficult job, because of vaccines and other public health measures being tied to political ideology?
MA: I think there is always a need for public health. If public health is not prioritized, there will be more burden on the clinical health, there will be more burden on the hospitals.
Does the government have the resources to bear that burden? Does the community have the resources to bear that burden? So, those are the fundamental questions. I'm sure that the U.S. government has the capacity to deal with those questions.
RMPBS: Can you give me an example of one of the community partnerships you're working on and building?
MA: We have a WIC program, which is the Women, Infants and Children program. We provide nutritional counseling, focusing on pregnant women. The service includes some sort of counseling during pregnancy period, when the mother is delivered with the baby, then we continue with that counseling as well as we provide food assistance to the mothers that is nutritionally, quality food.
There is a referral mechanism, the organizations working at the community level, they refer the people who are in need of those services. We have a number of Hispanic organizations we work with, they have a good network at the community level.
RMPBS: Why Colorado?
MA: To be very specific, my immigration was based on extraordinary skill. Those who work internationally, have experience, high level of skills, high level of education — the U.S. government encourages them to [come to] the United States so that they can contribute. I came to that category, that means I am morally obligated to contribute to this country.
And why Montrose? I thought that Montrose would be the perfect place to start. It’s a smaller community, and sometimes if you work in a smaller community, you can see the result.
It is easy to work closer to the community. If I work in the state level or the federal level, you are never close to the community. You are far, far away.
I love to work with the communities. That was the main thing actually, the motivation of coming here to Colorado and also to Montrose.
Type of story: Q&A
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
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