Collective Improvement with Missoula Public Health

We probably know what comes to mind when you hear "health department." But there is much more to Missoula Public Health than infectious disease monitoring. From air quality to restaurant inspections to the WIC program, the work of MPH undoubtedly affects your life and your health.

This week the commissioners spoke with Jeanna Miller, Chief Health Officer at MPH, about how your city-county health department works to ensure healthy conditions for all residents.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:11] Welcome back, everybody, to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm seated here today with my friend and county commissioner Dave Strohmaier. Juanita Vero is away today. And we're joined by our very own Jeanna Miiller, director of our health department, a more properly to say, chief health officer at Missoula Public Health.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:29] Yes. Great to have you. Is this the first time in this role you've been on the agenda?

Jeanna Miller: [00:00:35] This is my first time on any podcast.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:37] Holy smokes. Okay, I

Jeanna Miller: [00:00:39] Know Mark this.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:39] Day. Yeah. This is great. This must be intimidating for you.

Jeanna Miller: [00:00:43] It's so terrifying. No, it's actually a little bit of a dream come true because I'm a huge podcast fan. And so maybe if you asked me about some books later, we will.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:51] We're going to do that. We're totally going to do that. Yeah, that is on the agenda.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:55] So just to get things rolling here, you've been with the health department for a good period of time prior to your current role as Chief Health officer, maybe just give us a little bit of background with your connection to public health and our very own health department here.

Jeanna Miller: [00:01:11] Sure, yeah. I've worked at Missoula Public Health, formerly known as Missoula City County Health Department, for about 18 years while I was born in Glendive, grew up in Havre. So I speak eastern Montana as well as western Montana.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:22] Now you can code switch.

Jeanna Miller: [00:01:24] Mhm. It comes in handy occasionally. And I, I got my undergraduate degree from MSU Northern. Well two degrees one in water quality technology and one in environmental health. And so my first job at the health department was actually in our environmental health division for about 8 or 9 years. I worked as an environmental health specialist in on a couple of teams doing a variety of roles, anything from restaurant inspection or illness investigation to subdivision review and water system inspection and planning and that kind of thing. In 2016, I obtained a master's degree from University of Montana in Public Health, and shortly after took a management position in environmental health. A couple of years later, I got a certificate in Public Health Management Management from the University of Washington and 2024. Just June of last year, I was appointed to this position. So I've worn many hats at the health department.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:16] It's a great work your way up. It's kind of story. Yeah. So during the pandemic, not that long ago, I think a lot of people got introduced to the phrase public health or the health department did X. Before that, it was barely on anybody's radar. So if you were to run into some stranger today who said, oh, what do you do? Oh, you're the health officer. What is public health? Isn't that just like masks when people get sick? What is it you all do? What would your response be? And knowing that they had at least five minutes.

Jeanna Miller: [00:02:45] Oh, okay. So you get to talk for a while.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:46] You don't have to. It's not one.

Jeanna Miller: [00:02:47] Sentence. Well, what I would say I would probably first thank them for asking the question because it's my favorite thing to talk about. That's great. I think it's important to emphasize how broad public health is. It is an entire system of evidence based and scientifically proven strategies that collectively improve our health. It's everything from crosswalks and seat belts and traffic safety to maternal and child health. Early interventions in our youngest populations, ensuring that they have what they need to live a healthy life. Across our whole lifespan, climate resilience, natural resource protection, communicable disease investigation and mitigation. So I mean, public health touches a whole lot of aspects of of all of our lives. And there are a whole lot of definitions out there if you want to talk definitions. But there was one that I saw recently that really resonated with me. And I believe it's from the Institutes of Medicine, but it's pretty simple and it's something very similar to or exactly. Public health is what we as a society do collectively to improve our health. And that really caught my attention because rather than going into a lot of detail and trying to explain the breadth within a within a definition. It really describes that it's a whole lot of togetherness. So it's what we do. It's not what any one person does. It's a whole system, and it's how we come together through a whole set of strategies to improve our collective health.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:06] What you're describing sounds a whole lot like trying to be proactive. I think when some folks may think of our health care system, it's oftentimes once you're sick, you go see a doctor. And truly, there probably is that aspect of some of the work of Missoula public health. But what you just described there in terms of transportation, environmental health, it seems like a good chunk of that is seeing if we can get more upstream, if you will, to address some of the some of the issues that ultimately, if not addressed, would lead to a bad circumstance or bad outcome.

Jeanna Miller: [00:04:42] That's exactly right. I heard a physician on a, on a podcast one time describe public health and and relate it to it to health care. And he said something along the lines of 85% of your health comes from those preventative strategies that you engage in your behavior, where you live, the quality of your environment and the things around you, your social determinants. That's so much of the impact of your health outcomes, the reasons you might end up in the hospital. But the way we fund that is the opposite. So we put 85% of our funding into the health care system, which is reactive to a chronic disease or an injury, rather than flipping the script and really investing upstream in those preventative measures and just insuring everybody in our community has the same shot at living a healthy life, being well across their entire lifespan.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:31] You were talking about a definition of public health and you used the word collective. I can imagine for some people out there in the world, that kind of causes their hackles to come up a little bit. And they think, think things like, what do you mean? I'm a self-sufficient person. I don't need anybody. I mean, maybe there's some charity case out there, but I'm just fine. I don't I don't want anyone in my business. The collective sounds like the government reaching over my shoulder, and I'm not interested in that. What would your response be to that notions of collectiveness? And are there ways in which the collective works for us all, but are somewhat not visible unless you're in it?

Jeanna Miller: [00:06:04] I mean, I, I think that there are a lot of things that public health and, and our health department included really, really work at that people don't think a lot about. And so while we all have some degree of self-sufficiency and belief that we completely control our own destiny, like I said, so many of the things that are outside of your individual control completely influence your health.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:25] What would an example of one of those be?

Jeanna Miller: [00:06:27] Air quality. The quality of your roads and transportation systems. Early childhood interventions that you couldn't perhaps control on your own. Even the health of the people around you. And so you might do an excellent job with your nutrition and your exercise, and you're following the individual recommendations to be a healthy person. But if the society around you is generally sick. Disease is contagious. Your chances of living a healthy life are diminished just because the folks around you don't have the same opportunities to be healthy. And so it really is about our mission statement at MPH, which is building conditions. It's really about building conditions that support the health of people, the community and environments. It's about the atmosphere that you're walking in, rather than the set of circumstances within your household or within your control.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:13] That's great. I really like that. The atmosphere within which you are, you're walking in. I guess that's what you said. That's great.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:19] And you've been with Missoula Public Health long enough that that you've maybe had the opportunity to see changes over time. Has the mission of Missoula public health or addressing these challenges that we face collectively changed over time, or has it been fairly consistent? What's your if you were to just take a moment and and have a little bit of a retrospective of your time with Missoula Public Health. What would you say?

Jeanna Miller: [00:07:47] Sometimes when I have a retrospective, it makes me laugh because I was such a baby when I started at the health department. Sometimes I look at the managing director there who hired me, and I think, what did you honestly see in me? I had never really had a job before. So while I spent the first couple of years learning a lot and understanding the way our health department worked and what our goals were in the community, I think over time I've really acknowledged and respected that our mission hasn't really changed. The strategies that we use to get there often have to adapt to the the climate that we're living in, both literally and figuratively. But in terms of of what our goal has been, that's one thing I'm pretty proud of at the health department that across the board, the folks that have the interests of the community at heart, it truly is a service organization where we'll do whatever it takes within our capacity to improve our collective health as a whole. And that might look different at times. And, you know, we have to be adaptable. And adaptable, and we're pretty scrappy. And one thing that proved that was the pandemic response that really changed public health here nationally, globally for for a lot of reasons. And sometimes at the health department, we don't remember what happened before 2020 because it really was so impactful on so many levels that we kind of think of before the pandemic and after. There's a lot of changes resulting from that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:08] So I've got just an organizational question for you. It goes beyond mission or vision for the organization. I was up in Seeley Lake for a community council meeting a week ago, and one concern that we not infrequently hear from outlying communities is the sense that resources in the county are just kind of flowing into the Missoula Valley, and concerned that the city of Missoula is sucking up all of these resources, a big sucking sound. And one of the one of the questions that came up is, well, why is it that certain departments and there aren't that many, but why are certain functions or departments city county things? And from your perspective, could you maybe describe what the benefits are? Is there an economy of scale? What are the benefits of having a department like yours? That is a joint city county thing?

Jeanna Miller: [00:10:03] In a lot of ways it is economy of scale and the health department is large. It's a it's a large department. It covers the city and the county through an interlocal agreement, so to speak, a little bit to the resource division. We operate under an interlocal agreement that tries to be be true in terms of funding and resources coming into the health department as to where we're spending them. So it's a it's a pretty honest division of the portions or the workload for the health department that the city is funding, being that that's just over the majority of the population that we're serving and the county is funding. But I think even more than that. The reason why it makes best sense to have a city county health department is because the public health profession is pretty niche, and it's hard to find the right number in communities of a certain size of people who are this dedicated, willing to use all of their expertise and education in a public service job and often pretty thankless job. I don't think we would be able to staff up a city health department and a county health department and retain this amount of expertise. The city and county lines don't really need to matter for something like a health regulation. You know, what's a good condition for somebody in the city is a good condition for somebody in the county. We're not necessarily working within some of the same parameters or conditions that other agencies might be working in. When they're thinking about a more urban setting versus a more rural setting. There are certainly special considerations. And we think about equity and we think about transportation. We think about fair services to our more outlying areas. But the health the health department has about 100 employees and four divisions that are incredibly diverse. And so to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:44] Could you describe some.

Jeanna Miller: [00:11:45] Of those? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So administration is the one that people probably are not that interested in, as it's sort of the inner workings of the health department, it's budget and finance and accreditation and that kind of thing. It's our communications division, workforce development, quality improvement and accreditation.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:01] That means some third party who knows about such things has said this is a legit health department.

Jeanna Miller: [00:12:06] Yes. And that third party is fab.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:09] For not fabulous, just fab for.

Jeanna Miller: [00:12:11] To some degree fabulous. But it's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:13] The Public Health Association.

Jeanna Miller: [00:12:15] Accreditation Board. Yeah. So it's a it's an organization that specializes in evaluating health departments to make sure you are covering all of your bases to be an excellent service provider in your community. Nice. It is a rigorous process to meet all of the domains to, you know, drill down and show through either documentation or narratives that you're meeting all of the measures that an excellent health department should be meeting, and it's optional.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:43] Choosing to do it keeps us on our game.

Jeanna Miller: [00:12:45] Yeah. And two health officers ago, Ellen Leahy made the decision to to pursue accreditation. And we were the first one in Montana. And so that's something that we're really proud of. And we're right now in a reaccreditation cycle. And boy, is it a lot of work. And sometimes you might lose sight of the reason why we're accredited, because you're checking so many boxes and digging up policies and figuring out if you're meeting these measures, but it keeps you on your toes and it makes you really think about improvement. These standards and measures change and evolve as the environment that we live in changes and evolves. You think about funding or climate or equity, things that are really important and that we're noticing need to be addressed by the huge public health system. They're going to put that into your accreditation standards, and you have to be flexible.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:30] So the accreditation process itself, not the mark at the end helps you to be a better health department.

Jeanna Miller: [00:13:36] It definitely does because it makes you prioritize doing the things that you know you should be doing, but might not rise to the top.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:43] So that's admin. What are the other departments or divisions?

Jeanna Miller: [00:13:45] The division that I was born into and raised in is environmental health. And that in and of itself is very broad. So we have an air quality program. I could go on and on, but they educate the community on the air that you breathe. The impacts of wildfire smoke, some woodstove regulations, industrial discharge.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:03] Is this the entity that does the air quality monitoring when we have smoke events?

Jeanna Miller: [00:14:07] Yep, yep. We have several monitors throughout the county. And so we're trying to keep folks aware of what's really happening locally in terms of of air and recommendations based on air quality. And this would.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:16] Be the division also that has within its purview, say Smurfit-stone container and working on issues relative to thinking about that.

Jeanna Miller: [00:14:27] Yeah, environmental health is that division because they also have a water quality district. The district is unique in that it's not the entire county. It doesn't follow the city boundaries either. It's a portion that's outlined to capture the watershed. So the areas of our county where an activity could impact our drinking water, our sole source aquifer, is really important to all of us. And Smurfit-stone site sits within that district. And so our water quality district does is very involved in, in the cleanup process and monitoring how that's going. In addition to a lot of other things, animal.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:01] Control is that environmental health, animal control.

Jeanna Miller: [00:15:05] Out on Butler Creek Road by the interstate as part of environmental health. And that's not true of all health departments, but it's something that I think makes us awesome. And I'm biased, but there's a real connection between animal health and human health. And so and it's not just we don't want a whole bunch of dogs running around biting people, even though that's part of it. But thinking about animals potentially being a vector for disease, of course, the big one you think about is rabies. The animals are part of part of the atmosphere that we're walking in that can impact our health. And so animal control is is part of environmental health, as is restaurant inspections, licensed establishment reviews. So inspecting hotels and pools and restaurants and grocery stores and daycares and schools. So a lot of those institutional settings where conditions can, can impact the health of a whole lot of people that might be walking through septic permitting, well, permitting subdivision review for smart sanitation in new development.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:57] Now, some of those things are statutory. They're not just because our county wants to do them. True.

Jeanna Miller: [00:16:01] Yeah. There are state laws that require that counties, local jurisdictions, through boards of health, conduct certain activities and doing things like restaurant inspections as part of those. So we do a lot of that work under agreements with state.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:14] Agencies about the Septics.

Jeanna Miller: [00:16:16] Yep. Every county is required to have wastewater regulations, which would include permitting. So how you implement that in your county is somewhat up to your local circumstance. But every every county in the state regulates wastewater discharge.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:16:29] So administration, environmental.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:31] Health.

Jeanna Miller: [00:16:31] And two more. Bear with me. Health promotion, which is a division that maybe we can divide into two buckets. And the first is the infectious disease nurses. We've got a team of nurses that is responsible for not just investigation and tabling and teaching people about disease and getting sexually transmitted infection, testing out there and raising awareness for communicable disease in general. But also another statutory requirement is there's a whole list of what we call reportable communicable diseases in the state of Montana. And anytime somebody is diagnosed with one of those diseases, they have to tell the health department. And that's because one of the things we do is figure out where somebody got sick, who they might have passed it to, and try to get a ring around that. So not as many people are impacted. And that list is long. Of course people think of Covid, but it's it's many, many things. So when we get a report of a disease like that, we've got nurses to counsel that person on the appropriate treatment if they should, you know, stay away from folks for a while. Ask them who they may have come in contact with, and give them a set of recommendations that might include something like tuberculosis or pertussis. And there's a lot of education that goes along with reporting communicable diseases that come to the health department. The other portion of health promotion is what we call our prevention programs. That covers a whole host of things. And I might not name them all, but I'm going to do my damnedest. The first is Drive Safe Missoula. So that really has to do with promoting sober driving through a whole lot of initiatives and encouraging people to wear seatbelts to buckle up. Those are the two things that we can really do to prevent injury and death on on our roads.

Jeanna Miller: [00:18:05] Suicide prevention, tobacco prevention and other state programs that we get some pass through funding for. Since the Clean Indoor Air Act in Montana, we have connect, which is a program to try to bring providers together and get people the resources that they would need, healthy relationships or preventing relationship violence. And then we have a very robust substance use disorder prevention program that's got two people who are sharing the load of quite a bit of coalition work, trying to target, especially youth to make sure they have access to all those protective factors a social network, the right information, a supportive environment to not use in the first place, and then also addressing substance use as it already exists in our community. So talking about things like harm reduction and stigma reduction, and how do we get people to a place where they're able to no longer use and impact their health that way? The other thing that's really cool in our substance use disorder prevention is a program out at Frenchtown High School, our Frenchtown Community Coalition, and what we're so proud of out there is that that coalition is student led. And so we talk about drug use and alcohol use and vaping, other risky behaviors in our high school population. And it's a group of kids who volunteer to be on their leadership group and really inform the public health prevention specialists as to what would work for them. You know what doesn't sound cool to a teenager? What are they actually seeing in the parking lot? And so between work with their school resource officer and their school board, we've got some pretty cool changes happening out at Frenchtown. And we see lower usage rates in Frenchtown. Great. So we would love to expand that program.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:39] Fantastic. So this is when you talked about the great sucking sound that is the the Missoula Valley pulling resources our way. Jeanna talked about efficiencies by having a city. County. I'm using the word efficiencies, but we talked about having the city and county work together, and we couldn't staff up a city health department or a county health department. I do just want to point out a couple of things with my commissioner hat on, not just podcaster hat on, that the sucking sound actually goes the other way, as you well know, Dave. But for anybody who's listening, we get to exist with these great services at the city, county health department and at other departments across our county because we share costs. And you guys are exemplary in this. We have one building, not two buildings. The same person who inspects licensed establishments or restaurants in the city can also inspect them in them in the county. They have one truck instead of two, one computer instead of two. One staff meeting instead of two. Shared cost means reduction in liability for a taxpayer as opposed to we're paying more because we're doing it for the city. It's not that the county is doing it for the city, or the city is doing it for the county. It's that we share costs. So none of us has to shoulder this burden entirely as one taxing jurisdiction.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:44] That sounds like fiscal responsibility.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:46] It's being thrifty. Yeah. No one entity has to do this on their own. It would be too expensive.

Jeanna Miller: [00:20:52] It really would. And if I could add to that, the health department budget is incredibly complicated because public health fights for funding. We have a big department and we don't rely on solely on taxpayer dollars.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:06] You guys are a major source of grant revenue.

Jeanna Miller: [00:21:08] We pursue grants diligently. That's something we're very proud of. We're pretty competitive in the grant space. The downside to that, of course, is that it's not stable. It's not it's not stable funding. And so we might we might we certainly do. We have excellent full time employees who are grant funded and their grant might run out. And we typically can replace that and backfill it with another grant opportunity. But sometimes that causes you through deliverables to sort of pivot and change your service up a little bit, because this funder might want to see something a little bit different. And so again, go back to the absolute truth that we are scrappy. We will figure it out. There's a lot of there's federal pass through moneys. There's there's a lot of ways that we keep folks in the chairs, lights on and doing the great work that has nothing to do with taxpayer dollars.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:54] Two thirds of the money Missoula County spend does not come from local property tax revenue, and our health department leads the charge there.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:01] So administration, environmental health, health promotion. What is the grand finale? What's the fourth division?

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:07] Health services.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:08] Okay. Tell us what that is.

Jeanna Miller: [00:22:10] Yeah. So health services may be the the most kind of out front or public service that people would recognize as our immunization clinic. And so we provide immunization vaccination services to anyone, any age at any time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:25] And these are voluntary.

Jeanna Miller: [00:22:26] Of course they are. Yes. And so we are open five days a week right now and trying to ensure that we're accessible to the community. I think Wednesdays right now is the only day you have to make an appointment so you can walk in and speak with our public health nurses, figure out where you're at in your vaccination schedule and what's currently recommended, and get your shots.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:45] While we're talking about that, some of our listeners might be wondering, well, I have a pharmacy here in town. I could get a vaccination there. Is there an advantage to going to the Missoula public health for a vaccination?

Jeanna Miller: [00:22:55] There's an advantage in that. That's an income generator for us, and thus less of a burden on any tax support that we might need. And so fees for service is something that we rely on to provide these services to everyone. So we take uninsured, privately insured Medicaid. We take anyone regardless of their coverage. And so that might not be true at a pharmacy. But you know, you notice that clearly there is money to be made giving people vaccinations because a lot of people got into the game for reasons that actually stem from some laws that changed on or around 2017. But the health department's been there the whole time with your interest at heart, wanting to give you vaccinations. The other thing that we, I think sets us apart from maybe a maybe a pharmacy in town that can certainly profit off giving you a flu shot or whatever it might be, is that we are very diligent about ensuring that the information that you want in the state system is in there. And so we've heard a lot of sort of anecdotal information that if you don't get your vaccinations as somebody who really specializes in that game, it might not be recorded, you might not have the information that you want to be tracked for. You tracked again, also voluntary. That's great. We have a travel clinic. So say you were Juanita and you thought you could go on safari on horseback or something.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:13] I bet she visited the clinic. Hypothetically.

Jeanna Miller: [00:24:15] Yeah. I mean, that's just hypothetically. You could schedule a travel visit. And so we will take a look at your travel itinerary and look specifically at the diseases that might be endemic to the locations that you're going to, and recommend specialized vaccinations that would never be on the schedule for anybody who is just, you know, living and remaining in the United States will also have some limited ability to write prescriptions for things like malaria prophylaxis, which is just preventing malaria or altitude sickness or even traveler's digestive issues, which can really ruin your vacation.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:49] So such a nice way to put it. That is.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:52] That is.

Jeanna Miller: [00:24:52] That's good. I almost I almost didn't, but then I.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:55] Know that was you did a good job.

Jeanna Miller: [00:24:57] Thank you, thank you. And then in addition we have Wick, which is a federally and then state Pass-through funded program to ensure that everyone in our community has got good nutrition, especially women and then youngsters, I believe zero through five and home visiting. We have a team of nurses and social workers that do a whole lot of work with families, and that covers a lot of things. It's parenting classes. We've got a couple of evidence based programs. We've got a homegrown program called Welcome Home, Baby, where anybody in Missoula who has a baby can get home visits from a nurse to just ensure that you're off to the right start, ask all the questions you need with your new little one, and we're pretty excited for the results of that evaluation. If you can show something is really working, it opens you up to a little bit more grant funding.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:39] Yeah that's fantastic. So we're in the first month of the new year. Any projects for 2025 you're really looking forward to?

Jeanna Miller: [00:25:46] We have an animal control expansion that is in the works, and animal control has been in that building on Butler Creek for a number of years. And the expansion serves a lot of purposes. It's better housing for the animals. It's more conducive space for potential adopters to meet their new family member, but also the staff out there. They just simply do not have an area that's conducive to working so that the meeting space is taken over by animals. There's dogs barking while people are answering the phone. And so we're giving everybody a little more room. And that's underway. If you drive by, you can see I think they're at the framing stage and maybe got the the roof on perhaps. But that's very exciting. One thing that I'm excited about is taking a different approach to our communications. I think we have spent a lot of time talking about how broad the health department is and how broad public health is, but maybe somebody who was getting their news from our website or social media might not know that. And so we have some ideas in the works to use different channels to get the word out there, to meet people where they are and, and try to, you know, start, start from some common understandings when you're in public health, when you're really nailing it, knocking it out of the park. Nobody really knows what you're doing. It's a prevention game. And so I think the more we can be seen and known in our community, the better off we're going to be. If if we have an emergency, if something stressful comes up. So we want folks to know what we're doing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:10] And I'm glad you're hitting on that and appreciate. Earlier when we talked about the some of the things that you all do that are a bit on the invisible side. I mean, we go to restaurants and coffee shops and Missoula all the time, fully expecting, taking for granted that the food and drink we get there will be clean and well prepared, and the folks who are handling those things have been trained, and we just take it all for granted. It's kind of invisible when actually it only exists because we decided we wanted to do this and have folks like you and the people who work with you make sure and get the job done.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:42] Well, and speaking of invisibility, is there anything else that and you've described just a vast array of services and programing that Missoula Public Health does, some of which members of the public and our listeners are aware of, and others not so much. But is there something you're particularly proud of that is flying under the radar that you would want our listeners to know about?

Jeanna Miller: [00:28:05] I think that I could talk all day about what we do and how broad it is and what and what the goal is and what our mission is. But I think maybe the most invisible thing about the health department is the people that we have working there. I don't think that you get into public health or you stay very long. If you're somebody who really wants a spotlight on you or you want a lot of the credit. Something that I'm incredibly proud of is the people that work at the health department. It's not an easy job. There are times, as you can imagine, where everybody has an opinion and it could be divisive or polarizing or politicized. But I get to show up every day and work with people who have who could work anywhere. And they chose to work here. You know, they chose to work at the health department and chose to buy into this mission with an honest goal of making this a better place for all of us to live. And because you use the word invisible a couple of times, I have to put in a plug for this cool thing that we're doing, which is a film screening at the Roxie for part film screening of a PBS film series called The Invisible Shield, and their tagline is something along the lines of public health saved your life today, and you don't even know it. I love it. And our first screening was in January. There's four episodes. Our next screening is February 13th, and we really want to pack the house with people with all kinds of perspectives.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:22] So February 13th at 630.

Jeanna Miller: [00:29:25] And where.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:26] Physically, the.

Jeanna Miller: [00:29:26] Roxy Theater.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:27] Yes. Is there going to be a speaker afterwards?

Jeanna Miller: [00:29:30] Awesome. Yes. It's a facilitated discussion afterward. And so we want we want people to ask questions. We want to talk about how they feel about it, what confused them, what triggered them...

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:40] Will the Jeanna Miller be there?

Jeanna Miller: [00:29:40] Be there all the time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:42] Okay. That's great.

Jeanna Miller: [00:29:43] Yes, I will be there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:44] Nice. Thanks so much. Yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:46] So we always like to end these podcasts, Jeanna, with an opportunity for our guest to share a little bit of something that they are doing or thinking about or reading that is providing them inspiration and that, as a result, might also provide our listeners some level of inspiration which we all need in these trying times. So.

Jeanna Miller: [00:30:09] Well, my dream job is to have a book podcast. So I'm going to take you up on the book. Okay. A portion of that opportunity and if I may do more than one, the a book that I read recently that just kind of shook me to my core. It was called Demon Copperhead.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:25] Oh, yeah.

Jeanna Miller: [00:30:25] Okay, good. We have a taker. It's a Barbara Kingsolver novel, and it's about a young man's life and sort of pathway to addiction, to opioid addiction. And as a foster parent and a public health professional, I was just riveted. And I feel like it should be required reading. Maybe everywhere. I think it is really a pretty unflinching. And I loved it. Another book that I read recently is Woman Among Wolves. So Diane K Boyd.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:53] I don't know that.

Jeanna Miller: [00:30:54] One. Pretty new, but she is a Montana biologist who back in the 70s started documenting wolf populations in the state. And it's a bit of a memoir, and it's also scientific and it's very local. She's a UWM grad, and it was wonderful. And then the last one, which is a little different, is I believe the author is Jamie Ford, and the title is The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. And it talks a lot about generational trauma, which is, you know, public health covers things like trauma and your Aces score, you know, things that happen to you that cause you to be the adult that you are. And it's across many generations and many continents. And ultimately, you get to ask the question somewhere in the future is if you could erase that generational memory, should you and could you? So it was so thought provoking. And I just.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:37] Say the title.

Jeanna Miller: [00:31:38] Again, it's the many daughters of Afong Moy. Jamie Ford. Thanks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:43] Yeah. Thanks so much. And now I'm.

Jeanna Miller: [00:31:44] A book podcaster.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:46] Oh, you did it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:47] Yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:47] And thanks so much for coming today. And for all you do.

Jeanna Miller: [00:31:50] Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:51] Please pass our thanks on to your staff. They do great work. I sure will.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:54] Thanks to you all for listening. And we'll see you again next time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:07] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:12] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as M-cat, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:25] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:32] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:40] Thanks for listening.