With healthy doses of education, health-care related services and old-fashioned friendliness, DeeDee Martin and Sara Frederick have hit the ground running in establishing a presence in Allen County and beyond.
Frederick, 38, and Martin, 34, have been appointed as interim co-directors of the Southeast Kansas Multi-County Health Department, positions they’ve held since Aug. 1.
They replace former director Diane Bertone.
Their aim is establishing, and in some cases re-establishing, relationships throughout their service area of Allen, Bourbon, Anderson and Woodson counties.
The Health Department’s services include adult and childhood physicals; immunizations; Kan Be Healthy screenings for Medicaid-eligible children; and family planning services, such as breast exams, pap smears, pregnancy tests and blood pressure and blood sugar checks; and SRS referrals.
Martin and Frederick hope to branch out even more.
They’ve visited with county commissioners throughout their service area about their hopes to expand family planning practices and providing more community health-related laboratory services. They also want to add fluoride varnishing for children’s teeth.
Martin also is joining forces with Thrive Allen County to provide a dietary class through Thrive’s Meltdown campaign, which begins this week. The time, place and location for the class have yet to be announced.
“Our primary goal is to get out and about and meet with people we’re serving in our counties to let them know we’re not just involved with flu shots and physicals,” Frederick said.
The expanded services are being made possible through collaboration with Health Department staff and other health care officials and county commissioners throughout the service area, Frederick said.
“We were limited in what we could do before,” Martin said. “Now that we have the opportunity to expand and be out in the community, we’ve taken full advantage of it.”
“We’ve had absolutely fantastic ideas, not only from our coworkers, but from the state and county on down. Our board has been so supportive of these new ideas,” Frederick said. “Our primary goal is for us to be out and about serving our counties.”
Education will be a primary focus as well, Frederick said. The department already has a presence in local schools courtesy of a grant that allows them to provide on-site immunizations to students in Allen, Anderson and Woodson counties.
“We’ve been working with schools to be present at enrollment,” Martin said. “We’ll be there at parent-teachers conferences. We’ll provide educational materials.”
The Health Department also offers Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs in Anderson and Woodson counties. (Allen’s WIC program is administered out of Crawford County, as is Bourbon County’s).
