We sat down with Michael Sequeira, MD, the county health officer for San Bernardino County, at the 2023 Southern California State of Reform Health Policy Conference. Sequeira told us about the areas of public health he’s focused on improving in the country’s largest county, which include communicable diseases, the fentanyl crisis, and post-pandemic system recovery.
“We’re working with (Health Management Associates) to look at our infrastructure post-pandemic. We’ve had to, by necessity with the pandemic, rapidly expand all of our workers, and now with the [end of the public health emergency], we’re contracting, but looking at everything that’s been left over that we’ve got to pick up the pieces [for], and prevent that loss and severe contraction because we were way too contracted before the pandemic.”