Louis B. Ruediger | Tribune-Review
Samuel Scuzzese, 63, of Arnold, rests his hand on the shoulder of his roommate, Lisa Fox, as they wait the for the rapid covid-19 test result at the Community Health Clinic on Fourth Avenue in New Kensington on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021.
Louis B. Ruediger | Tribune-Review
Community Health Clinic nurse Cheryl Carson takes a covid-19 swab test of Samuel Scuzzese, 63, of Arnold, on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021.
Louis B. Ruediger | Tribune-Review
Community Health Clinic Executive Director Raji Jayakrishnan stands inside the clinic’s medical van on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021.
Louis B. Ruediger | Tribune-Review
The Community Health Clinic’s new medical van is parked outside of the clinic’s New Kensington facility on Fourth Avenue on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021.
Westmoreland residents seek input on spending $105M in pandemic funds
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Greensburg church, others partner to fight vaccine hesitancy
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Members of the Voice of Westmoreland, a local grassroots organizing group, raised a call for the county to establish a health department during an online town hall forum on the vaccine rollout in the region.
The online town hall brought together representatives from Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Healthcare PA, the Greater Greensburg-Jeannette NAACP and Westmoreland Community Action as well as 220 households.
Participants weighed in with questions and complaints throughout the two-hour forum Tuesday that featured state Sen. Lindsey Williams and speakers from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s office, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office as well as a panel of medical experts.
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When Kim Ward was sworn in as a Westmoreland County commissioner in 2008, one of her first questions was: Who oversees the county’s health department?
The former respiratory therapist was stunned to learn there wasn’t one.
Westmoreland, like 61 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, leaves the issue of public health to the state to handle. Only four cities statewide have their own health departments. That reality of the state’s public health infrastructure would come back to haunt and frustrate local officials 12 years after Ward asked her question, when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in early 2020.