Washington County Public Health welcomes new Admin

By Molly Roberts
Posted 12/29/21

When the pandemic started in March 2020, Emily Tokheim was still in school, studying her Master of Public Health at the University of Iowa, but Tokheim is now the new administrator for Washington …

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Washington County Public Health welcomes new Admin

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When the pandemic started in March 2020, Emily Tokheim was still in school, studying her Master of Public Health at the University of Iowa, but Tokheim is now the new administrator for Washington County Public Health and is ready to jump in head-first to the health needs of the community.

Tokheim said she’s always wanted to work in a career that helps people on a large scale, and public health has given her that opportunity.

“I’ve always, to an extent, known that I wanted to go into a career field where I was helping people, in a health-minded career field. I wasn’t really truly aware of what public health was or what we did until I started taking classes at Iowa,” Tokheim said. “When I took my first public health class as a freshman at Iowa, I was really drawn to public health because I get to do exactly what I dreamed of doing, which is helping people on a larger scale and working on the prevention side of health, before people get sick or injured.”

Starting a new job in public health in the middle of a pandemic is definitely a challenge, but Tokheim said she is blown away by the support and actions of her colleagues throughout the pandemic.

“I was still in school in March of 2020, so I feel like because of that, I really have an outside-in perspective on working through a pandemic. I wasn’t the one who put in those long hours or that really hard work, but I was learning about it and hearing about it second hand. It has been really valuable for me to learn from my colleagues both in and out of Washington County, to hear their stories of the work they put in to make sure that people in their communities were safe, they were healthy and they were being educated. I know it’s been exhausting work for all of them, but the fact that they’re still here shows their commitment to serve their communities.”

Tokheim said she has been encouraged by the number of people who come to the Wednesday clinics at Washington County Public Health for COVID and flu vaccines, especially around the holidays. The department will hold walk-in clinics for COVID and flu vaccines every Wednesday. While no appointment is necessary, interested parties can still make an appointment through the appointments tab at washph.com.

“We’ve been really reactive to COVID through the last two years. While, unfortunately, it’s going to be in our community for a while, I’m really excited to add in more education and prevention efforts to the daily work that we do here in this department,” Tokheim said. “Still be mindful of COVID, still make sure that we’re educating people and offering services like vaccine clinics, but also getting back to some of that population health prevention that we’re here to do.