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Marshall County Health Department settles in at new building

Marshall County Health Department leadership and staff have enjoyed not only more storage space but also the ability to offer new programs and services to residents since moving into their new building.

MCHD employees began moving from their temporary facility into the new location in late December of 2024. The new $9 million facility, funded by the Marshall County Commission, is dedicated to late MCHD Administrator Tom Cook.

The new building is located on Seventh Street in Moundsville. The facility encompasses the space of the former health department building and the next-door building, which once hosted the Moundsville Journal.

As they settle into the new space, MCHD Administrator Jo Ann Dobbs said the most exciting aspect of the move has been the larger size of the building.

With the new building containing four exam rooms, compared to the two exam rooms in the old health department building, Dobbs said they can increase the number of residents they see for services such as family planning.

“I can’t say how limited we were in the past because of the space we had,” Dobbs said. “Not only do we have space to run more clinics, but we also feel confident to have more patient traffic in the building.”

The first floor of the building is dedicated to health services, including clinical facilities and nursing offices. The flooring on the first floor, except for the space in the entryway, is antimicrobial, meaning any drop of blood or virus that gets on it will be dissipated and killed.

After walking through a set of doors from the main entrance area, patients enter the facility’s waiting area. This room contains a separate exit door in the event that a patient has to return to the building again to be tested for COVID-19.

Dobbs said the separate, closed-off patient exam rooms on the first floor of the building are much more comfortable for patients than the exam rooms in the prior building. She noted that when the former building was built in the 1950s, considerations for patient confidentiality were not taken.

“When it [the former health department building] was built in the early ’50s, the walls weren’t complete, so you would have a big gap at the top of the wall which allowed noise to carry over the walls,” Dobbs said. “We tried to help the situation by putting speakers up and talking softly to clients to protect their privacy.”

One of the exam rooms also serves as a negative pressure room for tuberculosis patients. With the press of a button, negative pressure is initiated in the room to protect staff from getting the disease.

Another room with a dental chair is used by the MCHD Dental Hygienist Charlene Rine, who is on staff three days a week. Rine can examine patients’ mouths and make referrals for care.

Another one of Dobbs’ favorite features of the new building is the amount of storage space. She identified the medical record room as one of the features of the new building that she “appreciates the most.”

The medical record room stores clinical files, dental files and tuberculosis files that must be kept forever. In the former building, Dobbs said there were “boxes everywhere” due to the lack of storage space, with the addition of COVID-19 files to store during the pandemic taking up even more of their limited storage space.

“We didn’t have a medical record room at the old building because it was a very small unit,” Dobbs said. “If you didn’t see how small the former building was, it’s hard to imagine how much of a relief this storage is.”

The second floor of the building is devoted to the environmental, business and threat departments. Dobbs said the space on the second floor gives these departments “room to grow.”

A lab room on the second floor is available for environmental department employees. Dobbs said environmental staff will soon be able to perform animal autopsies, as an autopsy table is set to arrive for the lab.

“We have to cut an animal’s head off and send it to the state lab to test for rabies, so we will have the ability to do that when we get the autopsy table,” Dobbs said.

The second floor also includes a large conference room space that will be used for meetings and trainings.

The new building space will allow the MCHD to provide new services, such as lead testing and multiple new programs for residents.

Dobbs said the health department plans to bring the WISEWOMAN program to the department. This program identifies women with obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease and teaches them lifestyle changes.

Another program Dobbs is excited to begin at the new building is the FARMacy program, which they will collaborate with WVU Extension to implement. The program provides participants $25 of fresh produce every week for 15 weeks. A WVU Extension employee will visit the health department to teach participants how to use the produce in recipes and store it properly.

In addition to opening up the ability to provide new services and programs to residents in the new space, the building provides MCHD employees a sense of confidence that they will have enough space and resources in the event of another public health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are 100% more confident we could handle something like COVID here,” Dobbs said. “This building was designed when COVID was fresh in our minds, so we’re more than prepared to keep the public safe here.”

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