Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor
Ginelle Jones retired in March as Director of Warren County Health Services after a 31-year career with County Health, eight years in the top seat.
In September 1996, during the Adirondack Balloon Festival, she recalls, “We had a hepatitis outbreak associated with one of our restaurants. We had a rabid fox up in Pottersville bite two people that same week and I had a young kid with a lead level of 98,” when a count of 15 was already cause for alarm.
As then-supervising nurse, she liaisoned with the family, got the child hospitalized and treated, the home tested, oversaw the rabies situation and found patrons who’d eaten at the restaurant.
“I think we prophylaxed 4,000 people,” she said — arranging preventative treatment, including visitors from out of the county and from as far away as Japan.
The restaurant was “absolutely phenomenal,” she said.
During the West Nile Virus outbreak in early 2000, Mrs. Jones says, a bird fell out of the sky at the Rite Aid parking lot in Warrensburg. “It had a BB hole in it. It got shot out of the sky,” she says, but they were required to test it anyway.
“It came back positive for West Nile.” Mrs. Jones muses, “What are the odds that somebody would shoot a bird out of the sky, and that would be the first case in Warren County for West Nile?”
At the helm during Covid
The Covid pandemic in 2020 came two years after Mrs. Jones became Director.
Her takeaway? “We’re a resilient community. Warren County fared very well because we had an amazing community and colleagues, and people all heeded, listened and did the best we could with a bad situation. Our employees were absolutely out of this world, rock stars. They just kept coming to work on the gerbil wheel and never asked or questioned if they were getting lunch that day or getting out at four o’clock or whatever.
“Everybody stayed together as a team until the job was done.”
What did she learn? “Just, trusting your staff will be there for you. When you have an excellent team that’s going to be right there with you, and everybody’s an equal member of the team doing their piece, that’s where you find success.”
The question of vaccines
“During the pandemic,” Mrs. Jones says, “my goal was to vaccinate 100% of Warren County. We were 80% in the first round. We were like, top three or four in the state. It still is my goal, to have 100% of Warren County, vaccinated whether it be flu, Covid, tetanus.”
She says, “Covid is still very alive and well. We’re still seeing deaths,” three or four a month, she said.
“It was a busy late fall and early winter, with flu, RSV and Covid. We’ve seen a dip in vaccinations, unfortunately. That’s for flu and for everything.”
“I don’t know if Covid per se has deterred vaccinations more than maybe the national landscape.
“Trying to keep up with changes in the immunization program, it’s not like a switch that goes on and off. There’s a lot of behind the scenes when there’s a change that we have to quickly react to and get that education out,” to doctors and school nurses, she says.
Called up for 1998 ice storm
In 1998, Mrs. Jones says, “I got called up to Clinton County for the ice storm, to do mutual aid with their County Health Department. We stayed on cots at SUNY Plattsburgh. I got to ride in Hummers with the National Guard. I got to go along with the fire fighters, park and forest rangers in their pickup trucks.
“We went door to door, giving people red bags to put on their mailboxes. They didn’t have power or phones. If something happened, that’s how they alerted people to stop if they were in need.
“But we were also educating them on things like not starting barbecue grills inside the house if they didn’t have heat.
“One of the prongs of the response for the ice storm, when they were diverting all the power personnel up there, was making sure they all had tetanus shots.”
She said the plan was “just vaccinate everybody ahead of time so that if they have an injury, they don’t have to worry about tetanus.”
“Whether it’s tetanus, the flu or Covid, or it’s measles or Hepatitis B — to me, if there’s a shot, and you can prevent somebody from being in the hospital or having this, that, or whatever, it’s the way to go.
“Our goals are to prevent, protect and promote,” Mrs. Jones says. “Public Health can give what we feel is an over-arching people healthy and safe. When you look back at the pandemic, especially early on, if you go back to the fear, we didn’t have a vaccine. You couldn’t find tests. There weren’t masks everywhere or anywhere.
“Where Public Health is important is to kind of say — here’s this monster out here. Here are things you can do to help keep yourself safe, but go to your provider and talk specifically about what you need to do. If I learned anything from Covid, it’s to let the providers give the recommendation to the patients.
“You might have a condition where the provider would say, ‘I don’t think that this is the right decision for you’ — then you should be following your provider’s recommendation.”
What about people who question some of the mandates imposed around Covid?
“When you’re in a job to protect the health and safety of people, you only have the benefit of what you know at the time,” says Mrs. Jones.
Early on, “we knew very little. Sometimes, when there’s not a vaccine or not a lot that you can do, the safest thing is to say, everybody go to your corners. Now, personally, do I feel that we kept people out longer than we should? Yeah, but, I’m looking at hindsight, having that benefit.”
“I do think going through the pandemic educated people. We’ve learned, if you’re sick, try not share your germs. There’s a nice spectrum of things we can do to prevent that, and everybody can choose what’s best for them or work with their provider to figure that out.”
Born in Mobile, but roots here
A native of Mobile, Alabama, whose parents were both from this area, Ginelle Jones says, “My first degree was in education. I taught school while I worked on my nursing degree. When I graduated nursing school I moved up here to take care of my grandfather.” She says she worked briefly at Glens Falls Hospital, until November 1994, when “the perfect dream job” as a public health nurse opened at the County.
“I did immunizations. I did the rabies program, I did communicable disease. I did the lead poison prevention program.
“Pretty much I was a gap filler. I helped out with health education when they needed because of my background.”
She became Supervising Nurse and then Deputy Director and in 2018 succeeded Patricia Auer as Director.
Mrs. Jones credits, with emotion, Mrs. Auer and prior County Health Director Joan Grishkot, both since deceased, as her mentors.
A Warren County Proclamation from Board of Supervisors Chair Kevin Geraghty credits “Ginelle’s dedication to public health, Warren County and her co-workers,” and her efforts as a “tireless leader” during Covid, “the biggest public health crisis in a century.”
Mrs. Jones’ Deputy, Patricia Belden, has been named the new Director.
Ginelle touts careers in Public Health
“If you want an amazing career,” says Ginelle Jones, “check out public health. You take people where they are, you help them with their need, and then the goal is to send them on their way. There’s something for everybody. There’s infection control, education, outreach, air and water quality.”
The newly retired Warren County Health Services Director touts, “We’ve got programs for children that have growth and developmental delays; for people that need certain immunizations; to help people that need home care; to help women, infants and children get food supplementation they need. We have our disease control program, and we have our lead program.
“We’re out teaching healthy heart, diabetes and weight management, dental health.
“When I first started, it was a lot of tobacco education. Dan Durkee, our health educator, has done a beautiful job.
“Then, because of all the vaping, we’ve had to transition that. Now you’ve got cannabis and we’re still trying to wrap our head around that.
“Then you have the opioid overdoses, things like that, and we’re working with other community members to form coalitions to help keep people safe, or as safe as they can be.”
“Whether you’re breathing air, drinking water, eating food, whether you have an illness, public health has a touch of that issue. We touch people’s lives every day.” — Cathy DeDe
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