Health is on most of our minds, especially at the beginning of a new year. A time for renewal and fresh starts, the Onondaga Health Department has a new leader, Dr. Katie Anderson, to assist with improving our health and keeping residents safe. 

“I'm an internal medicine physician and an infectious disease epidemiologist and for about 20 years I've studied emerging viral diseases,” said Anderson. 

Anderson is the new Onondaga County health commissioner. She moved to Central New York from Minnesota with her husband and two children in 2019.

“When I moved here it was to deepen my collaborations in Dengue research and mosquito-borne viral research. But then COVID happened just a few months after we got here. And that gave me really, for the first time in my life a chance to work really deeply in the community. I was living in tackling a public health problem that was impacting my community and that was really hard, but it was also very satisfying and opened my mind to a different kind of public health and something that was more local," said Anderson.

Service in public health is calling for a lot of learning for the new commissioner.

"So the last month for me has been a whirlwind of learning about our forensics labs and their fingerprinting bullets, our forensic autopsies that we do with the medical examiner, our activities in catching mosquito pools, testing them for Eastern Equine Encephalitis, rabies, STDs, lead," said Anderson.

Anderson shares what her main focus is now as she leads the county to better health. 

“Malnutrition, mental health, opioid [addiction]," she said.

Combating the opioid crisis includes a number of strategies.

“Currently, our activities are making sure that Narcan is widely available starting needle exchange, and trying to minimize harm," said Anderson.

The county like the nation is experiencing a large number of respiratory straining the health care industry.

“The thing that's concerning about this phase is that we have all the tools at our disposal. Again, we have antivirals at work we have paxlovid, and we have vaccines that still work, but people aren't taking advantage of the tools," she said.

She now leads the 230 health department employees she inherited.  Anderson seems happy and even energized when you ask about them.

“They’re champions, they're unsung champions… It’s a really special group.”

Anderson says she is excited to continue to learn from her team and improve the health of Onondaga County.

Anderson adds that she likes to cook Thai food. Also in her downtime, she studies languages and you may even catch her signing with her singer-songwriter husband in a local performance.