Senators: tough task ahead for new Public Health director

Senators voted to approve the nomination for Theresa Arriola to serve as the director of the Department of Public Health and Social Services during session on Tuesday. The former Behavioral Health director is officially stepping into her new role at a difficult time for the health agency. 

Senators approved Arriola's nomination during session, though not without sharing concerns for the tough task ahead. Speaker Therese Terlaje says Public Health is at a ‘crisis level', saying, “I’m very much looking forward to her service. But there are some issues facing the Department of Public Health and Social Services that I think we are going to need to be collaborative on and going to need to be transparent in order to regain the trust of the people of Guam in our public health services in all aspects."

Among those concerns are a need for more social workers at Child Protective Services with an unprecedented amount of children in the system, paused health and illness prevention programs, and a need for a centralized health center for the island’s disadvantaged.  Senator Joanne Brown criticizing the lack of urgency to consolidate services after the Community Health Center in Mangilao was vacated due to an electrical fire in 2019, leaving the building to ‘deteriorate’ for the last five years. 

 “As a result, what are we doing? We divided up these services where most of the clients we’ve seen from the presentation made earlier this year by the employees of Public Health– the employees that work there saying, ‘please give us back our building so we can provide services to our clientele out in the community,'" he sa'd.

Brown says while she supports Arriola’s appointment, she hopes the new director will make this a priority.   Senator Chris Barnett held the same sentiments. While the former Public Health director shut down a bill earlier this year that would have reopened the Mangilao facility despite supportive testimony from his employees, Barnett hopes Arriola listens to her employees.  

"And I really hope she really looks across the island and realizes that we really need to get these services to the people who need them, to the people who deserve them. And that’s not coming from this legislature," he explained. "That's coming from the experts that have been serving the people for decades, who are able to look at how we used to do things when they worked versus how we’re doing things now when the data and the statistics show that our babies are dying because we can’t get the critical services to the mothers and families that need them."

Senator tom fisher also calling the amount of infant and maternal mortality a ‘tragedy’ and a ‘public health emergency.’  He looks forward to the new director's leadership, saying, "It’s not an easy task. It’s often not popular. It’s a difficult task and Ms. Arriola is very fit to do the duty. So I have every confidence in seeing the Department of Public Health move forward under her leadership."

11 senators voted in favor of Arriola’s appointment with four senators absent and excused. 

And first on the new Public Health director's agenda: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recognized Guam’s efforts in reporting critical data to CMS through the transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System.

Guam is the third U.S. territory to submit data through this system, which is a federal requirement mandated by the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020.