In the October 24th Guthrie County Board of Supervisors meeting, the Supervisors heard about the changes with the Central Iowa Healthcare Coalition.

Guthrie County Public Health Director Jotham Arber shared with the Board that the coalition, which Guthrie County is a part of, was looking for a new Emergency Preparedness Coordinator. He recommended that the Guthrie County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator should be nominated for the position, and after discussion, the Board said they believed it was a good idea.. Arber tells Raccoon Valley Radio about the coalition.

“The goal of that coalition is to put all of these counties together for emergency preparedness, not necessarily have one administrator, so to speak, of everybody’s county, but to give a resource group. And so, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) provides money, the state provides money to this coalition, and then we are able to work on things as a coalition. So a good example of this would be the ‘Stop the Bleed’ a few years ago, where we were putting out ‘Stop the Bleed’ kits.”

Arber mentions that the coalition has also done work to increase the amount of Automated External Defibrillator (AED) access points, and that during the Covid pandemic, they helped provide things that hospitals needed, including Personal Protective Equipment. He adds that the coalition has representatives from each county’s Public Health Department, Emergency Management Agency and one of the Emergency Medical Services.