Yavapai County Community Health Services

Yavapai College Training Nurses as High Demand Continues

January 28, 2022 By quadcities Leave a Comment

YC strives to provide an extraordinary training program to aspiring nurses.

As the extraordinary burden on healthcare systems continues, Yavapai County Community Health Services Director Leslie Horton is praising Yavapai College for its strong nursing program. “Because of recent strains on health care, due to the pandemic, and the shortage of healthcare workers nationally, it is more important than ever to provide a quality nursing program that not only educates and equips our local residents who want a nursing degree, it also attracts those seeking the degree to come to our community and to seek employment. Thanks to Yavapai College and its nursing program, we have been able to develop, educate and employ nurses locally who sustain health care for all of us during the pandemic — and, we hope, for years to come.”

Nursing officials agreed with Horton and her recommendation that students have as much clinical and apprenticeship experience as possible before entering the workforce. YC nursing students are expected to complete rotations in clinical settings and find internships to gain real world experience.

Recent YC successes include reaccreditation of the YC associate of nursing program, growth of nursing student scholarships in the YC Foundation to more than $2.5 million, an increase in the number of doctoral and other graduate degreed faculty among the 13-member teaching faculty, and the December mid-year pinning and graduation of 39 student nurses.

Especially important is the positive report from the Accrediting Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN), authorizing accreditation for the next eight years. It documents that the program is strong and beneficial to students, communities and stakeholders, said YC Nursing Program Director Marylou Mercado, Ed.D.

The college teaches nurses on two campuses, one in Prescott with 129 students and one in the Verde Valley with 77 students. “Faculty share teaching responsibilities and travel from campus to campus, dependent on what expertise is needed at any given time,” said Mercado.

High Demand for Nurses
Recently-released data by the U.S. Department of Labor indicate that the employment outlook for nurses is high and will increase, especially as the current workforce retires. Demand for nurses will likely grow by at least 7% annually for the nation, which is higher than for most other professions. Salaries are also increasing.

At the Yavapai College Health Summit sponsored by the YC Regional Economic Development Center (REDC) in Camp Verde this past late fall, REDC Executive Director Richard Hernandez said the need to attract qualified medical personnel is high, particularly in Yavapai County, which has a population of more than 236,000 and is top-heavy with senior citizens.

Mercado echoed Hernandez’s concerns. “We must look at how we retain our own health care workers and how we attract others to come here,” she said. “We must develop even more collaborative efforts to keep them in the field here in our communities.”

As a result of the health summit, a number of recommendations were developed to support nurses in training other healthcare personnel. They included:

Creation of dedicated and subsidized housing and childcare facilities for local healthcare personnel.
Linking healthcare scholarships to apprenticeships and multi-year opportunities to serve in a specific community.
Streamlining course offerings and apprenticeships to put even more support workers in the field.
Expanding deployment of healthcare resources to reach even more remote area in the county.

The 24-month YC Nursing Program starts twice a year. “The program is vibrant and growing,” said Mercado. “We are accepting cohorts of 50 new students each spring and fall semester, for a total of 100 new students each academic year.”

Mercado said she and her team are actively seeking opportunities with clinical agencies to increase clinical placements for increased nursing program growth. She emphasized success rates for employment had been exceptional. “In 2020, our graduating employment placement was 90%.”

“Nurses are a critical part of our healthcare system,” said YC President Lisa Rhine. “They are a vital part of our local communities. YC strives to provide an extraordinary training program to aspiring nurses. I am proud of the impact our nursing students have in our communities. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many things changed, these students persevered to complete their education and reach their goals. I commend them for their resilience and dedication in helping others.” QCBN

By Ray Newton, QCBN

Next Generation Tools Lessening Pandemic Impact

January 6, 2022 By quadcities Leave a Comment

Scientists hopeful that evolution and technology will tame COVID-19.

As the highly contagious omicron variant appears to be outpacing the delta strain in the United States, one of Arizona’s leading infectious disease scientists says the endgame for human coronaviruses in the past has been to become more contagious but make us less sick. Thus, the evolutionary character of COVID-19, together with “next generation” tools, have scientists optimistic that we are better able to treat the disease and guard against severe illness than ever before.

“One of the great next generation technologies is this sequencing capability for genetic material,” said Dr. Dave Engelthaler, director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute’s disease branch. “We look at the RNA and DNA of infectious diseases. By studying the genomics of this virus from the very beginning, we’ve been watching it evolve and seeing new mutations that might lead to new variants. Essentially, they would mutate to a way that they could transmit faster, maybe not cause more serious disease, but maybe start to evade some antibodies. We thought we had the winner of the-survival-of-the-fittest race with delta – that thing transmits really fast and it replaced all other strains around the globe – and then omicron pops up on Thanksgiving Day.”

In Yavapai County, health officials continue to report a high transmission rate. Yavapai County Community Health Services Assistant Director Carol Lewis stated there were 301 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in mid-December. Yavapai Regional Medical Center had 71 COVID patients, Verde Valley Medical Center had 21 and the Veterans Administration had five patients.

“This omicron variant does seem to transmit a lot faster. But It doesn’t seem to cause any more serious illness; in fact, there’s growing evidence that it may be milder,” said Engelthaler. “We’re watching that closely to see if it is really going to replace delta and keep this pandemic going, or are we building up enough immunity now to really help slow that down and maybe get to a post-pandemic, what we call an endemic phase, with this particular virus.”

The good news, he says, is that all the other human coronaviruses have become more easily transmitted but cause milder symptoms. “Most people just get a cold. We might be moving in that direction, which could be the silver lining behind this whole dark cloud of omicron.”

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization for the first antiviral pill called Paxlovid for the treatment of mild to moderate symptoms in high-risk patients.

In addition, the vaccines that have been developed during the pandemic are providing a “giant antibody boost and a good cellular response” to prevent a life-threatening infection, he says; however, their effectiveness drops over time.

“That’s why we have boosters out. And we do hope that the boosters will get your antibodies back up to the same levels that they were when you first got vaccinated and help you from either getting infected or having any kind of a serious infection with omicron,” said Engelthaler.

He recommends that those who are most vulnerable – the elderly and those with any type of immune deficiency – get the booster shot, “probably once a year.” And that everyone else receive a booster shot six to 12 months after vaccinations. “It’s not a bad idea just to keep your antibody levels up high and if we do that, we’re going to keep moving to this endemic phase where now we just have another virus that we can deal with. Just another cold.” QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

For more from Dr. Engelthaler, visit Zonie Living: Business, Adventure and Leadership at starworldwidenetworks.com

Retiring the Voice of County Health

November 23, 2021 By quadcities Leave a Comment

Terri Farneti retires following an intense public information effort through COVID-19.

Some may think only the past couple of years have been truly challenging for those involved in public and community health.

Terri Farneti likely will disagree with those folks. She’s been directly involved with public health issues for the past 16 years. It was only two months ago, in fact, that she retired from the intensity of those pressures escalated by the pandemic. Before that, other health concerns kept her constantly reacting.

For 16 years, Farneti has been integral in alerting residents about the full range of healthcare issues that permeate the various county communities.

She started her career with Yavapai County Community Health Services (YCCHS) in December 2005 as an administrative assistant to the assistant director of public health. Through the next few years, she demonstrated abilities and skills that resulted in rapid promotion to positions of increasing authority and responsibility. Hence, when the H1N1 virus – sometimes called the “Swine Flu” – ravaged the world’s population from 2009 until fall 2010, she was directly involved with identifying, developing and supporting vaccination clinics utilizing hundreds of volunteers throughout the county. “This was a massive effort, and the county had not previously done anything quite like it,” she recalled.

Not long after that, she was part of the YCCHS team that developed the very first Community Health Assessment Implementation Workplan. That effort, which began in 2012, led to the department’s becoming an applicant for the National Public Health Accreditation in 2015. “This was a huge project, and we had 197 items we had to document and submit for review to receive accreditation. But we got it in March 2016,” Farneti said.

In 2017, when Leslie Horton was named department director, Farneti was promoted into a position as special projects coordinator. Horton said Farneti soon became involved in grant writing and coordinating many of those areas of knowledge and expertise that assured the department was operating smoothy. She later was given public information duties.

Horton said during the pandemic, the YCCHS activated a Public Health Emergency Response. “Terri’s work quickly and drastically changed as the public information officer. She gathered information, issued press releases and Facebook posts and whatever other means of information she could find to inform the pubic of the latest COVID 19 data. Terri was our ‘go-to’ person for information for the media.”

Farneti explained, “When the pandemic hit in January 2020, we’d never faced anything like it. It took all the talent from throughout the YCCHS to establish the Emergency Operations Center. I feel so fortunate that I was in a team atmosphere that made positive things happen. In spite of it all, YCCHS applied for re-accreditation in January 2021. We all cooperated and managed to submit our reapplication for accreditation on June 1, 2021.”

Not Always in Health Service Disciplines

Farneti, a native of Wayland, a small town in west central New York, earned her degree in hotel and restaurant management from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has more than 40 years of experience in the restaurant and hospitality industry, ranging from small operations to working for the Marriott Corp. in New Jersey and at major hotels in New Jersey, Atlanta, Georgia and Hilton Head, South Carolina. She met her French-born husband Maurice when they both worked at the L’Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls, Virginia. They moved from there to Washington, D. C., where they worked at the prestigious Hay-Adams Hotel in catering, which Farneti calls, “a highlight of my hospitality career.”

In 1998, they moved from D.C. to Prescott, where they purchased a coffee shop on Gurley Street they renamed “Provence.” A couple of years later, Farneti accepted a position at Yavapai College, where she held dual administrative roles as a member of the Leadership Center Team and a staff member for the Office of Government for Northern Arizona. When Yavapai College downsized those units, she applied for and was hired by YCCHS, where she worked and advanced for 16 years.

“As much as I enjoyed my work for the county, both at the college and most recently, health services, I confess my husband, Maurice, and I enjoyed some other marvelous experiences here in the community and the state. I especially enjoyed my community organization experiences—the Prescott Area Leadership Class, Big Brother-Big Sisters as a “big” for 14 years, the Launch Pad Teen Center and most important, the League of Women Voters for Central Yavapai County.”

NOW THAT I HAVE MORE TIME

I’m planning to join the U.S. Tennis Association and play more tennis, especially in league play. I’ll also remain involved in League of Women Voters.

WHERE I’D LIKE TO VISIT

Maurice and I want to climb into the Dodge Sprinter camper van we bought and see some new country – anywhere we want to go. I especially want to go back East to see friends and family we haven’t seen since we moved out here 24 years ago.

FAVORITE HOLIDAYS

How’s this for opposites: St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween. I guess it’s because I love the Irish heritage I have, but I also love being incognito in my costumes for Halloween.

PEOPLE I ADMIRE

I observed so many of my colleagues these past few years putting in extra hours of work, trying to help people understand just how severe and serious these epidemics and pandemics are. Sometimes they were treated inappropriately and unfairly. The reality is, they need to be praised and admired.

UPON REFLECTION

I’ve done far more than I ever thought I would do. I’ve worked with some tremendous friends and leaders. I gained far more than I ever expected. But now it’s someone else’s turn to gather information and attend meetings and take responsibility. I just hope they are as lucky as I have been. QCBN

By Ray Newton, QCBN

Disinfecting in Hopes of Reopening the Navajo Nation

August 3, 2021 By quadcities Leave a Comment

As the delta variant spreads, two young men from Tennessee continue to fight the coronavirus with deep cleaning and deep caring.

As medical experts and scientists battle COVID-19 and its variants, some consider the newest battle to be coronavirus fatigue: a disinterest in wearing masks, social distancing, sanitizing and practicing other public safety measures following the many months of staying at home and avoiding public gatherings.

One business armed and fighting that war is Southern Solutions Environmental (SSE). Two cousins from Tennessee began this small decontamination startup in November 2019, just before the pandemic broke out globally. They moved their company to Window Rock on the Navajo Reservation last June, with no business contract in place and no expectations about being paid for their services.

Ike Hawkersmith, 27, and Collin Anderson, 26, are SSE’s field generals. They also are warriors on the front line in the battle to wipe out infectious germs in public parks, museums, jails, police buildings, government vehicles and anywhere people can’t work from home on the Navajo Nation. Their uniform is a HAZMAT suit. Their weapon is Deacon7, a disinfectant commonly used in the agriculture industry.

“It kills coronavirus in under 60 seconds,” said Anderson. “It’s safe for all forms of contact. After eight hours, it breaks down into water and evaporates.”

The chemical disinfectant is made by Sandia Labs operating out of Scottsdale.

‘Brothers’ on a Mission

Hawkersmith and Anderson grew up together. “We are like brothers,” said Anderson. “We went our separate ways in life and did our own thing, but life brought us back together just before the pandemic. We saw what was coming in reports out of Wuhan [China] in November 2019. “We decided it was time to launch and we refitted the business for the inevitability of what was about to happen.”

Hawkersmith’s dad was an environmental scientist who died suddenly in a bike accident two years ago. Ike inherited his environmental cleanup services company. Meanwhile, Anderson was in the army as an infantry soldier with the Tennessee National Guard. During his six years of service, he pursued his interest in medicine, becoming an EMT and nurse. Not long after earning his nursing license, COVID-19 hit.

The business partners were following the news about coronavirus hot spots in big metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles. But the hot zone that really caught their attention was the one bubbling up in the middle of the desert. “The Navajo Nation was being disproportionately affected,” said Anderson.

Factors making it hard to control the virus there, he said, included the lack of running water and electricity in many Navajo homes, as well as cultural traditions that favor large family gatherings and tight-knit communities. “We talked to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service incident commander at the time and he told us he needed people out there. They didn’t have any money, but if we could help, they needed it.”

SSE settled in the Chinle area for its base of operations and began doing a lot of volunteer work in June 2020. As the illness took off, Hawkersmith and Anderson began the challenging and potentially dangerous job of decontaminating spaces across the reservation with the goal of slowing of the spread. SSE was taking on other jobs in the Four Corners region to pay employees and cover costs. In the process, the company hired locally and at one time, had 112 employees.

Anderson says the need to help was bigger than the business. “We call it human-centered capitalism. The bottom line shifts. It’s more important for us as an organization to help people. Sometimes, that means cutting out profit and overhead. We’ve always had these values, but we were definitely influenced by the pandemic. People are really suffering and now is the defining moment to make sure people are taken care of.”

The CARES Act offered financial relief last fall. With money made available through the U.S. government economic stimulus bill, SSE was awarded a contract with the Navajo Nation that lasted until the end of the year. “It was very rewarding after months of volunteering with no thought of funding.”

Delta’s Arrival

Medical leaders say COVID cases are on the rise in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as the highly contagious delta variant rapidly spreads across the country and the world. The mutant strain, also known as B.1.617.2, originally surfaced in India and is now on the Navajo Nation. The first case was reported in late June.

“The case count has been picking back up over the past couple of weeks,” said Anderson. “It’s a shame to see. I believe it’s probably the influx of the delta variant. In June, 20% of cases in the U.S. were caused by the delta variant. Now, the majority of new cases are being attributed to the strain.”

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has called it one of the most infectious respiratory diseases ever seen by scientists. According to recent data, those infected with the strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain.

In Yavapai County, epidemiologists have received one notification of the delta variant so far; however, health officials say only a sampling of positive test results are submitted for genomic testing throughout the state.

Yavapai County Community Health Services Public Health Coordinator Terri Farneti says the symptoms are slightly different from the original virus. “It seems more like a bad cold. Many people could think it’s just a cold and may not seek testing for COVID, yet they are very contagious. With the easing of mitigation measures of physical distancing, mask wearing and the increase in large gatherings, many people are getting infected.”

With the resurgence, the SSE team is as determined as ever to continue to wage its attack on the deadly virus. The company’s workforce currently ranges from 15 to 20 people, ages 26 to 38. Anderson says they have been working impossibly long days, fumigating and flushing the disinfectant through ventilation systems to bombard every cubic inch of the buildings they visit.

“It seems like my day hasn’t ended for the past 17 months,” he said.

Many of the facilities they clean have not been significantly updated or built since the ‘80s, ‘90s or early 2000s. “They have diminished airflow quality. These are little hives where viruses like the coronavirus and hantavirus can live and not be expelled where they can disintegrate outside,” said Anderson. “At the end of the day, the viral load in these buildings is rising until someone goes in and cleans it out. Disinfecting these places is of utmost importance to lower the chance of exposure to free-floating particles of virus.”

New Map App

Currently, SSE is not under contract with the Navajo Nation; however, the team is working to refine its operations while training and preparing for a large decontamination push through this fall and winter. This summer, they have created a new tool to help them. The Coronavirus Decontamination Status App identifies every location they’ve disinfected, down to specific buildings.

“I would not be the first to say we do a lot of navigation by landmark on the reservation. There are not really addresses and named roads. Being able to know where each building that we’ve cleaned is located is a key function to preventing exposure events,” said Anderson. “We now have a big map and database of every facility we could find on the Navajo Nation from southern Utah to Alamo, New Mexico, southeast of Albuquerque. It is one of the most extensive maps of Navajo tribal facilities. We wanted to make sure we could provide this to the nation for use now and into the future.”

Besides their app invention and decontamination work, SSE has a significant wood-cutting and wood-hauling project along with a water and food delivery project. “This is all in the name of relief and recovery. We knew we still had resources, people and motivation to continue to help out,” said Anderson.

Today, Hawkersmith and Anderson live in Farmington, New Mexico. “This is a place we have set down roots. We are aiming to be here and help out any sort of underserved community,” said Anderson. “The pandemic brought us here. I don’t see us leaving the area any time soon.” QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

Yavapai County Community Health Services

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