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Former, interim, and once-again full-time State Health Officer Dr. Ed Thompson, said “there’s not a lot of new” in public health going into 2008 and its legislative session. He continues to tout funding for personnel and bond authority for a new public health laboratory as top needs.

Some legislators might disagree based on scrutiny over the past five years. Legislative action in the 2007 session indicated that both senators and representatives expected “a new direction” for public health.

The role is familiar to Thompson, whom the State Board of Health announced Dec. 5 as the new State Health Officer (SHO) and executive director of the Mississippi State Department of Health. The statutory term gives Thompson six years.

The board, reconstituted in the 2007 session, took less than an hour at their first meeting in July to name Thompson interim SHO. They also chose Korn/Ferry International to conduct a national search for the permanent position, promising to pay one-third of the position’s first-year salary plus travel expenses; with the salary at $230,000, the fee would total nearly $77,000 plus travel.

Board chairman and member of the search committee Dr. Lucius Lampton said, “I think it was the best decision we could make. We still have a lot of work to do in the department.”

Other search committee members were Drs. Ed Hill, Geraldine Chaney and Alfred McNair, Jr., and Ronald Robertson, Sr., with Thompson an ex-officio member.

Lampton did not say what persuaded the board that Thompson was the best choice or when the committee decided that Thompson would be appointed. He did not reveal whether Thompson presented himself as a candidate, if Korn/Ferry recruited him, or whether one or more board members encouraged his candidacy.

Thompson had implied he would not be a candidate for the permanent position because he enjoyed chairing the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, but several public health advocates admit they knew or suspected early-on that Thompson would sign on for a second tour as SHO. After nine years as SHO from 1993 through 2002, he retired and went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as chief of public health practice and deputy director for public health services; he resigned from CDC and returned to Mississippi in 2007.

Section 41-3-5.1, Mississippi Code of 1972, provides the job description: an executive officer — either a physician who has earned a graduate degree in public health or healthcare administration, or a physician who in the opinion of the board can execute the duties incumbent upon him or her by law.

In that role, Thompson said he will push for the legislature to appropriate an extra $16 million for state fiscal year 2009, with $10 million for personnel — $7 million for new positions and $3 million to fund approved-but-unfunded salary realignments.

“Our core focus is personnel,” he said, “new people and fair pay.”

The SHO also re-emphasized Mississippi’s desperate need for a new public health laboratory; blueprints already exist. He’s asking legislators to amend the previously-approved bill so that general obligation bond money will pay for the facility. He would not reveal whether he intends to retain Dr. Mills McNeill as lab director.

McNeill, formerly both state epidemiologist and director of the public health laboratory, drew headline controversy during 2006 Senate Public Health Committee hearings related to the board and the department — hearings prompted by release of a 2005 report from the Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) Committee. McNeill was described as “adversarial,” reported to have denied the increased possibility of more West Nile virus cases after Hurricane Katrina, uncooperative with non-public health physicians, and, generally, not reporting occurrences and outbreaks of communicable diseases.

Thompson did declare that he plans “few personnel changes. I do not anticipate a wholesale purge of employees. So far, I have found that most of the people here are doing good work; as long as they’re effective, honest, open, and don’t withhold information.”

But Lampton said, “Hiring a ‘permanent’ State Health Officer will allow that (officer) to fix and address some of the problems an ‘interim’ could not. I am concerned with some who remain in the central office, and I agree that more strategic cuts need to be made. I think they will be made.”

Beyond legislation, Thompson said the agency seeks new bids for an information technology system because the two bids as submitted “were too high — about $24 million, and each had failings. Now we’re going for three separate systems that will ‘talk’ to each other. We expect that cost to be no more than half, about $3 million a year for three years.”

Money for the distinct systems, he said, would come, respectively, from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Clinic and Distribution System; the Immunization Program System; and the Public Health Network, which is state-funded.

“We also need to address chronic disease in Mississippi,” he said. “We have no organized, planned approach” for the control and prevention of such diseases as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and oral health. Thompson said the agency will apply for help from the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, asking them to send a team here toward identifying definite moves Mississippi can make.

Additionally, Thompson said “infant mortality is one of most important things to be addressed over next the next five years. We’re awaiting Gov. Barbour’s naming a Blue Ribbon panel with whom we’ll work” to set the plan in place. He said that getting eligible expectant mothers on Medicaid within the first trimester for adequate, appropriate prenatal care likely gets top billing, adding “some out-stationed Medicaid eligibility workers are in our clinics part-time, and this month (January 2008), we’ll go live with a Web-based system to access birth certificates for the applicants.”

Thompson said he considers the agency and new board to have addressed concerns presented in the 2005 PEER report. He also said that although he himself testified in the 2006 Senate Public Health Committee hearings, he has “not read all the transcripts and doesn’t intend to. I think we’ve spent too much time looking backward. We must move forward now.”



February 2008

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