Main Responsibilities Of A Public Health Investigator At LA County Public Health
Fabiola, a Public Health Investigation Manager at LA County Public Health, describes a multifaceted role encompassing "contact tracing," investigating outbreaks of diseases like COVID-19 and STDs, and enforcing public health laws, including the power to detain individuals who refuse to comply with quarantine orders; the work takes place in diverse settings—"the office setting, the field, and the clinic"—and includes environmental monitoring, such as "water sampling to make sure the water is not contaminated."
Public Health, Epidemiology, Disease Investigation, Community Health, Law Enforcement
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Fabiola Chavez
Public Health Investigation Manager
LA County Public Health
Cal State Northridge , 2004
Cal State Northridge
Accounting
Healthcare, Medical & Wellness
Medical
Video Highlights
1. Public health investigators work on a wide range of communicable diseases, including COVID-19, STDs, tuberculosis, and salmonella. They conduct contact tracing and work in various settings including clinics, the field, and offices.
2. A significant part of the job involves interviewing individuals and their contacts to prevent the spread of disease. This can include providing treatment and partner notification services.
3. Public health investigators also play a role in enforcing public health laws, such as ensuring individuals with diseases like tuberculosis comply with isolation requirements. They may even have the authority to detain individuals who pose a public health risk by not following these laws.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role?
Some of the main responsibilities of a public health investigator involve dealing with all communicable diseases for LA County. This includes investigating COVID-19, sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, and salmonella, as well as any outbreaks or emergent diseases the county faces.
Our work involves contact tracing. We go out into the community to individuals who have tested positive for these diseases. For example, if someone has a sexually transmitted disease, we interview them to identify their sex partners. This is to ensure the infected individual is tested and treated, and that their partners are also tested and treated to prevent disease spread.
We also work within county clinics. The county has nine sexually transmitted disease clinics where we encourage patients to seek care. Our role in the clinic is to interview patients and ensure they receive treatment if needed. We again elicit sex partners and ensure they are treated. If patients wish to treat their partners themselves, we provide them with medication to deliver, which is called partners' direct therapy.
Additionally, we collect mussel samples from beaches and conduct water sampling to ensure the water and mussels are safe for public consumption and swimming. We handle HIV cases, as new HIV diagnoses are reported to us.
We also address occupational health concerns. If someone diagnosed with, for instance, salmonella, works in a restaurant as a cook, we remove them from their job to prevent spreading the illness while handling food.
So, we do a bit of everything, working in the office, in the field, and in clinics. Our role as public health investigators for LA County is to stop the spread of diseases and enforce the law. If someone is infected, we ensure they comply with the law by getting tested and treated.
For example, if someone has tuberculosis and is required to isolate, we enforce this to ensure they are quarantining. If they are not, we can detain them because they are not following the law and are risking the health of the county.
In essence, our role and responsibilities as deputy LA public health investigators are broad. In other counties, these roles are called Disease Intervention Specialists, but here in LA County, we are known as public health investigators or deputy health officers. We carry badges, similar to sheriff's officers, because we have the authority to detain individuals who are not complying with quarantine laws, particularly concerning TB.
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