TAKE FIVE!

December 22, 2020

Amanda Langseder:
Hi, I’m Amanda Langseder. Welcome to Sullivan 180 Presents Take Five!. Our guest today is Haley Motola, epidemiologist for Sullivan County public health services. Welcome Haley, and thank you so much for being here.

Haley Motola:
Thank you so much for having me.

Amanda Langseder:
Share a little bit more about yourself and what exactly does it mean to be an epidemiologist?

Haley Motola:
I’m Haley, I’ve lived in the area for about a year and a half now. Being an epidemiologist is really interesting. The discipline is kind of all over the place. I think the basics of it is the who, what, when, where, why and how of infectious and chronic disease. So it’s kind of like investigative work. You’re looking for patterns, you’re looking for frequency and distribution, different determinants of health in the population and a public health setting. And we look at a community level approach. Epidemiologists can be employed in pharmaceutical companies and research facilities and academia, and also in local state and federal health departments. So it’s a little bit of everything, it’s like looking at the individual investigation and then kind of looking at the bigger picture then, so you start small and you get larger, you look for patterns, you look at areas that need outreach and attention. If you’re looking at it geographically or, or not, if you’re looking at it, if you’re basing it on demographics or age or sex or things like that.

Amanda Langseder:
What programs do you actually oversee at Sullivan County public health?

Haley Motola:
So in that beginning algae department, we look at lead, we look at rabies, we look at vaccine preventable diseases, immunization programs. We did measles. We do a little bit of everything. Any reportable, communicable diseases, STI’s are a big thing that we handle. And of course, COVID-19 right now. So any new emerging, novel diseases we deal with that too. And influenza, the flu clinics, rabies clinics, all that good stuff.

Amanda Langseder:
I probably know the answer to this question, but what is the biggest priority for your department right now?

Haley Motola:
Right now, it’s definitely slowing the spread, which I know everybody has heard billion times, but it is our, our goal is to slow the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible in order to not overwhelm our healthcare system.

Amanda Langseder:
Absolutely. And we here at Sullivan 180, as I told you, where we’re ready to support in whatever way we can to get the word out and the education out into the community. If somebody wanted to learn more about your department specifically, and it’s services, how would they go about it?

Haley Motola:
So you can go to the Sullivan County, government website, just type in Sullivan County, New York. And if you want to learn more about coronavirus specifically, there’s a big yellow bar across the screen. You just click on that goes our dashboard that has every single weekday it’s updated with the number of active cases, people who are in isolation, quarantine, deaths, hospitalizations, people who are ventilated, as well as broken down by zip code. If you actually click on the little zip code, that’s updated every couple of days, because there’s just such an influx right now. It’s not as frequently, but the overall dashboard is updated every day. Unless something crazy happens technologically or otherwise. You can also go to the overall page for public health services. You just go by department, click public health services, and it’ll bring you to a page with more information about the resources that we offer and the different programs that we have.

Amanda Langseder:
Anything else that you’d like to share at all. About you, what you do at public health and what’s happening now in the world?

Haley Motola:
It’s the same old song and dance, it’s social distancing is huge. It’s tough right now. I realize that people want to see their families. They want to see their loved ones during the holidays, but it’s so important to socially distance wear your mask. Masks work, they work because the virus is transmitted primarily through the larger moisture droplets that if you’d laugh or you cough or you talk loudly are expelled through your mouth. And the fabric cloth masks capture those larger, well, they’re not going to filter out the little individual viral particles. They’re traveling in a larger droplet of moisture from your mouth. So it captures what it’s traveling in and that’s how a mask works. So wearing your mask is vitally important, and washing your hands, using hand sanitizer is also incredibly important, keeping healthy, keeping safe, everything that everyone’s been doing for the past nine months.

Amanda Langseder:
So if somebody was going to a holiday celebration and with their family they shouldn’t feel ridiculous wearing a mask, right?

Haley Motola:
Oh, not at all. It’s the new cool thing to do, wear a mask.

Amanda Langseder:
They’ve got them in all sorts of very trendy prints and we have our own Sullivan 180, I wish I had one handy because I’d show it to you. They’re beautiful. Oh, we give them out at Peace, Love and Lights too. So if you get the chance to join us out at Peace, Love and Lights for Walkthrough Wednesdays, it’s the event at Bethel Woods where you can see all the lights and we’re almost at 500 Sullivan County people walking one mile at Peace, Love and Lights.

Haley Motola:
So good to hear.

Amanda Langseder:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Haley really appreciate it. And so looking forward to partnering with you and working closely with public health, as we continue to slow the spread and work on public health issues now and into the future. Thank you again.

Haley Motola:
Lovely. Thank you so much for having me.