The new chair of the Grey Bruce Board of Health feels most of his upcoming tenure will be spent making the transition away from pandemic-driven work to a more "back-to-normal" approach.
Former Georgian Bluffs Mayor Alan Barfoot was elected for a one-year term.
"The past two years have been an unprecedented and challenging time for Public Health due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but hopefully this is behind us, and we want to make sure we get back to the core of what public health is all about, which is working with communities across Grey and Bruce counties to protect and promote health," he said.
Barfoot served as Grey County's representatives on the Board of Health between 2016 and 2018 before he was appointed by the provincial government in 2020. He says a focus for him before his two-year term expired in February of 2024 is to ensure school-aged children have received what he called "proper immunization."
"We've seen a backlog in that, and we want to make sure that children that start school have received proper immunization, so that down the road, they're not getting diseases that have plagued us in the past," he said, noting the board intends to monitor the health of young kids going through its school systems.
Grey Bruce Public Health also launched a new logo and visual identity this week, something Barfoot says comes at an ideal time and "will help to usher in a refreshed perspective of our local public health unit.
The new identity will also see a new acronym come into use - GBPH, which will "hopefully address confusion between Public Health and other organizations that shared similar acronyms," according to a media release from Grey Bruce Public Health.