Mattawa discusses financial support for Grant County Health District

MATTAWA — During the virtual Mattawa City Council meeting Thursday, Grant County Health District Administrator Theresa Adkinson asked council members for a renewal of the agreement with her district and to consider contributing money to help support it.

It’s what Adkinson and her staff do at each city council throughout the county every year.

While the health district is supported by the state, Adkinson said it is difficult for them to do everything they are mandated to do with the small staff they have. Because of this, cities are asked to contribute. While most cities contribute $2 or more per resident, Mattawa has historically only contributed $500.

“This hasn’t stopped us from coming to your community,” Adkinson said. “We don’t want to punish the community.”

Adkinson reported in the past year, the health district was involved in a number of different non-COVID-related activities in Mattawa, including food inspections, tuberculosis treatment, providing and installing new car seats and helping special-needs children with their health care needs.

On top of these regular duties, the health district has done all of the contact tracing for those who speak Spanish, as well as others, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adkinson said early in the COVID-19 outbreak, the health district decided to keep the Spanish-speaking patients in-house and not turn them over to state contact tracers so they could provide local residents with the reassurance they needed from someone who was also local and knew the situations they faced. Adkinson said the health district also has worked closely with local schools, clinics and employers during the pandemic.

As of Thursday’s meeting, the health district had contact-traced for 536 COVID-19 positive patients in the Mattawa area. Adkinson said because of this, her staff has answered questions and provided a quality of service that residents of other counties haven’t had.

“This has been a source of pride for my staff,” Adkinson said. “It has been what has helped them day in and day out. They’ve been helping residents navigate this scary disease. They almost became a case worker for a lot of them.”

During the meeting, it was mentioned in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the staff at the city of Mattawa expressed frustration with the lack of communication between the health district and the city.

When asked for his comments on the subject, Mattawa Police Chief Joe Harris said while he understands the health district was understaffed for the job it was asked to undertake this year and it was communicating well with Mattawa’s health care establishments, he didn’t think the health district communicated well with the city.

“When you look at the agreement and the services provided, they’re asking the city for money to augment services that are supposed to happen anyway,” Harris said. “I think that the school district and clinics should take on that extra cost, not the city. During the pandemic, the cooperation with the city has not been there.”

The Mattawa City Council decided to continue with its historical allocation for the health district, but agreed it should review this amount in the future.

“I think it is a matter of discussion of priorities,” said Councilman Brian Berghout. “We need to look at the big picture. Maybe we can allocate more and take away from other things that are less important. We don’t have to make that decision right now.”