CLINICS

We deliver medical, dental, pharmaceutical and behavioral care or coordination for more than 35,000 people.  Untreated oral infections, for example, lead to cardiovascular disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and worsen the effects of diabetes and other diseases.  As the primary provider of urgent dental care to the low-income and uninsured people of our city, our clinics significantly reduce such ill effects and thereby, taxpayer expense.

Our progressive pharmacy department has arranged for annual contributions of $1 million in free medications from major pharmaceutical companies.

Our Elm Street Center is a “federally qualified health clinic,” a pilot location for a full-scale diabetes disease management program.  Here we work with patients and their families to help them manage their diabetes, while collecting and reporting statistics that will lead to best practices and more effective treatment nationwide.

COMMUNICABLE DISEASE PREVENTION AND CONTROL

Our communicable disease experts are always available – 24 hours a day, seven days a week including holidays – to area physicians and nurses, schools, and emergency medical services for communicable disease prevention and control.  We work with the Department of Homeland Security, the Ohio Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control to ensure the area’s public health preparedness meets or surpasses the most current standards.  We report approximately 3,500 disease cases to local, state, and federal officials.

Additionally, we deliver immunizations against flu, test for and treat sexually transmitted diseases, and conduct HIV/AIDS and hepatitis testing.  Our Immunization Action Program ensures that children receive all their immunizations by the age of two.

LABORATORY SERVICES

We have the only public health laboratories in Southwest Ohio.  That means local flexibility, responsiveness, cost effectiveness and self-sufficiency in protecting Cincinnati’s population during health-related crises.

Our laboratories help prevent or contain communicable disease outbreaks by ensuring testing of all day care, health care, restaurant and other food-handling workers, and when needed, the general population.

As the clearinghouse for a regional laboratory network that includes 50 hospitals and other laboratories in Southwest Ohio, we are responsible for early identification of disease in the region, and for distributing state and federal communications to all area labs in the event of a disease outbreak.

ENVIRONMENTAL  SERVICES

Our Environmental Division helps improve and protect the quality of life in our neighborhoods through a variety of programs:

• Our food safety program issues licenses and inspects all public places where food is served.
• Enforcement of smoking ban at public places and places of employment.
• Licensing and inspection of household sewage treatment systems, rabies prevention, animal-bite investigations, pest control, West Nile virus surveillance, and testing for water safety in commercial swimming pools and spas.
• Our childhood lead poisoning prevention program monitors the screening of thousands of children and provides follow-up inspections, identification and removal of sources of lead poisoning.
• Waste management programs that includes regulation, licensing and inspection of solid waste facilities, infectious waste generators such as hospitals and laboratories, tattoo and body-piercing facilities, and automotive scrap yards.  
• Ohio River sampling, regulating open dumping and junk car removal.
  The litter and weed control program addresses high weeds and grass, junk piles in yards, other unhealthy and unsightly situations in neighborhoods.
• Licensing and inspection of marinas, mobile home parks and campgrounds, tattoo and body piercing facilities.

PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS

• Ongoing health status assessments, surveillance, reporting and alerts.
• Community-based education in schools, churches, health fairs and other settings.  Topics include cardio-vascular health, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, tobacco, breast cancer awareness, diabetes, teen violence, and accident prevention.  In 2006, we conducted 333 events.
• Senior flu vaccines, tetanus shots following floods, chronic disease management and prevention, healthy aging programs.
• Provide on-site nursing care for children with disabilities in schools, homes, and wherever assistance is needed most, through our Bureau of Children with Medical Handicaps.
• Our Women, Infants and Children program distributes nutritional supplements to qualified families along with educational services.
• Our nurses provide training and education to new mothers in their homes in our Maternal-Child Health programs.  A team of social workers and nurses follow the progress of these families for several years with our Medicare-certified program.

OFFSITE SERVICES

Schools – Our nurses are in all of our Cincinnati Public Schools elementary schools and one high school.  They help ensure that students’ learning won’t be impeded by dental pain, vision impairment, or a host of other health issues that can affect the next generation’s ability to succeed.

Homes - Our Medicare-certified Home Health Care Program, Maternal-Child Health Program, and the Bureau for Children with Medical Handicaps program, allow us to go to those that are not able to come to us.

Homeless and Van Services – There are people that can’t come to our clinic, so we go to them, providing the same preventive, emergency, medical, dental, and pharmaceutical services that prevent visits to the emergency room where cost are higher.

"Red Zone Neighborhoods" – Health department nurses go where other agencies won't; these communities know our nurses and welcome the help and comfort they bring.

Worksites – Our communicable disease experts assist employers in developing disaster-preparedness plans.