T-L Photo/JOSIE BURKHART The Belmont County Board of Health discusses the CARES program annual report, influenza and work-life balance policies at its Monday afternoon meeting.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Health Department is looking to enhance work-life balance for its employees, according to grants fiscal office Karri Baker.

Work-life balance factors into employee wellness, and Baker said she and other staff members have looked into remote work but determined it is not possible at the health department. Baker reached out to other health departments asking how they maintain their employees’ wellness and work-life balance.

Baker and staff came up with a personal leave policy that she presented to the policy committee, which recommended 21 hours, or three days, of personal time in addition to sick days and vacation time. The days would have to be used by Dec. 31 or the employee would lose them.

The health board discussed how to apply this new policy to new hires at the end of the year because members raised concerns of employees using their personal time around the holidays.

Baker said the question is if the board would like the policy to indicate an employee must complete their probationary period of six months, or 700 hours, before they get the 21 hours of personal time off.

Baker said the board can approve of the policy and, if it’s not working, revisit it in the future.

Board members, including Joel Braido, Elizabeth Glick, Dominic DeFelice, Darby Copeland, Jerry Moore and Dr. Wayne Groux, approved of the new policy.

Women Infants and Children program Director Lori DeCoy said during February, the department is celebrating Children’s Dental Health Month. In March, it will celebrate Opaque National Nutritional Lens, giving out plates and showing children how they need to have fruits, vegetables and different foods on their plates.

Also, DeCoy reported an odor in the WIC building in Bellaire to village Councilman Mike Doyle, who came to the building to see what was going on. Neither Doyle nor his son could smell the odor DeCoy was talking about, but she described it as an unpleasant smell that does not happen every day but started when heavy snow came this winter. DeCoy has been monitoring it and checked the sinked in the back of the building that does not get used often but determined that wasn’t the source.

DeCoy said it is not a sewer smell but could be a trap that hasn’t been flushed on the second floor.

Director of Nursing Gabby Timko said there has been a lot of flu going around, with 20 reported hospitalizations – the highest number the department has seen in three years. And although influenza numbers are up, COVID-19 seems to be decreasing with it at its lowest number of in January cases in the last three years.

The department is also going to start doing safe care visits again after Timko had a meeting with county Department of Job and Family Services and Child Protective Services staff. The department will also now be doing lead testing.

Medical Director Dr. Renato Dela Cruz and Director of Environmental Health Rich Lucas received a letter from Gabie Hengle from Rural Community Assistance Partnership, a nonprofit that assists rural communities in funding infrastructure projects.

Hengle reached out to request a letter of support from the health department for the Barnesville North Waterline Extension project to extend the waterline from the existing Barnesville system at the Interstate 70/Ohio 800 interchange to Hendrysburg-Mt. Olivett Road. Residents in these areas face significant challenges due to poor well water quantity and are currently relying on hauled water to meet their needs, according to Hengle. Hengle added that a letter from the health department supporting the project would greatly strengthen the efforts to secure funding and move the project forward.

Belmont County Community Access, Resources, Education and Solutions Program Director Chad Zambori also presented the CARES annual report.

CARES received 6,920 calls in 2024, which is an increase from 5,920 previously. The program also had 687 in-person visits and 506 home visits.

Zambori said the visits went up over the last quarter of the year because of the new nurse practitioner, hired in November, who is working at CARES now 10 days a month.

CARES mental health crisis response also saw an increase because of the different process of reporting the program did for the end of the year, which included recordings of any interaction that constituted a mental health emergency.

“We’re moving forward,” Zambori said. “We feel successful. We just want to be sure that we continue moving forward.”

Meanwhile, the board entered a closed-door session to discuss compensation.

For the next six months, the health board meetings will be held in the Belmont County Emergency Management Agency building.