MOUNT VERNON – Julie Miller followed her older sister’s advice to become a nurse, a decision that led her to 28 years in public health that’s ending with her retirement as Knox Health Commissioner in June.
Miller began her nearly 40-year career in health care as a licensed practical nurse shortly after high school. She later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Otterbein College, where she served as a clinical instructor for nursing students.
An ad her husband saw in a newspaper led her to apply for a job at a local health department. That start in public health brought her to work in Delaware, Morrow, Richland, Union and Knox counties. She was named health commissioner in Knox County in 2010.
Miller said one of her biggest accomplishments was building community partnerships with social service agencies and health-care providers. She did that with actions like attending the 22 townships’ meetings during her first year on the job, reporting on their local health department’s work.
“We have a wonderful relationship with pretty much everybody in the county,” she said.
She’s proud of establishing with her team a federally qualified health center at the Knox County Health Department and two other sites, one in Danville and one in downtown Mount Vernon.
“And we have successfully worked through a measles outbreak in 2014. And I believe we can say we've been successful so far in this response to the current pandemic,” Miller said.
The measles outbreak in Knox County in 2014 at the time was the largest measles outbreak in the nation in 20 years. Her leadership to mitigate the outbreak included personally administering vaccines at mass immunization clinics.
She established a call center and communicated with the public through Facebook Live events during the coronavirus pandemic.
Another accomplishment that impacts the community in a positive way is the advent of a community health needs assessment and the Community Health Improvement Plan.
“We're working on those priorities now. But that's a community effort both through the coalition that develops and administers the assessment (our survey) as well as that same coalition of partners that formed the workgroups [who] work on the action steps to address the priorities that are identified,” she said.
During her tenure, the agency grew from approximately 30 employees to 98.
“I think technology has advanced us and data collection. It's also hindered us at times, but I think that's probably one of the biggest things I've seen in in my work in public health,” Miller said.
Interest in public health has grown and how it can impact people using an upstream approach to prevent things from happening instead of watching them occur, she said.
“We've had a lot of successes with vaccines over the years as well as seat belts and bike helmets and tobacco control and prevention and tobacco cessation, some on heart disease,” she said.
Her guiding principles in getting through the pandemic were the same that she follows every day. She bases her professional actions on her faith, morals and ethics.
With her team, they challenged things at the state level during the pandemic.
“If we see people were suffering because of some guidance that was brought down, we try to figure out a solution or happy medium to allow them to move forward and yet still be safe,” she said.
Public health needs in Knox County
One of the core functions of public health is to assure all residents in the community have access to the resources they need.
“That doesn't mean we have to provide them, but we should be a partner or coordinate the efforts to make sure they do have that access and resources are available,” she said.
Policy development is another core function, and she’d work more with the Board of Health and other elected and appointed officials to develop policies that improve public health.
“I know people have a hard time understanding that there's individuals who live here still going without care, whether it's physical health care, medical, mental health or addiction treatment or dental or any of those types of spiritual health,” she said.
She’d tell her successor to continue the partnerships that have been developed.
“Listen and meet people where they are. I mean, you can't go wrong when you do those things,” Miller said.
