During the week of April 1-7, the Roanoke City and Alleghany Health Districts will observe National Public Health Week. The national theme, “Protecting, Connecting and Thriving: We Are All Public Health,” emphasizes what we know is true: the community’s health improves when we work together to build safe, interconnected, healthy communities for everyone.

Every day, public health workers across our districts, the state, and the country strive to make sure that our water, air, and food are safe. In addition to efforts to assure conditions for all people to be healthy, the public health workforce is responsible for assessing the community’s health; developing policies and programs to address needs; and assuring that those programs are effective, efficient, and available to all. Locally, RCAHD staff efforts have recently focused on Community Health Assessment processes in both the Roanoke Valley and Alleghany Highlands to gather input about health priorities directly from community members. These activities will allow us to both examine the complex issues that underlie community health and join partners to build a common agenda with shared resources.

Additional public health activities undertaken by RCAHD staff over the past year have included:

• Working with numerous community partners to respond to increases in reported cases of communicable diseases, particularly tuberculosis and syphilis. In 2023, we worked with medical providers to manage eight active cases of tuberculosis, a concerning rise over the typical baseline of one-to-two cases per year.
• Monitoring an ongoing increase of invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS) cases since 2022.
• Increasing outreach for sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing with community partners.
• Improving lead and rabies case management workflows.
• Partnering with local fire departments to provide more efficient joint inspections of mobile food units during temporary events.
• The completion of over 1900 food service inspections to help ensure the proper handling of food served to the public.
• Providing more educational opportunities and resources for families to keep their children safe through the car seat and infant safe sleep programs.
• Increasing outreach to ramp up overdose education and availability of naloxone (Narcan) to the public and increasing partnership outreach opportunities with local harm reduction and peer recovery programs.
• Increasing outreach to ramp up overdose education and availability of naloxone (Narcan) to the public and increasing partnership outreach opportunities with local harm reduction and peer recovery programs.
• Fulfilling over 27,000 vital records document requests, such as birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates.

Residents can learn more about these and other public health efforts on our website, including in our most recent 2023 Annual Report. While Public Health Week celebrates the public health workforce, we recognize that no individual, organization, or initiative can change the health of our community alone. We look forward to increasing opportunities to partner with others, especially our residents, because it takes all of us working together to improve our community’s health.