Our 2021 Annual Report

It’s with great pleasure we present our 2021 Annual Report! The report provides a brief look into some of our key accomplishments from the year. This was our second year with a full-fledged COVID-19 response, but several programs were able to resume projects and reestablish routine services, even with many staff still at least partially serving in the response.  During 2021, our staffing levels peaked at 347 staff—up from about 150 staff pre-pandemic. Having extra hands for testing, vaccination, and disease investigation allowed us to increase the number of community members we could serve and services we could offer.

Here’s what you will find in the 2021 Annual Report:

If you’re unfamiliar with our agency, page 2 provides an overview of our agency: our budget, our Board of Health, and our four divisions: Community Health; Policy, Planning, and Evaluation; Environmental Health Services; and Operations.

Tallying up the numbers of clients served, vaccines given, establishments inspected, beaches tested, and more is no easy feat, but pages 3 and 6 provide just a glimpse of our COVID-19 and programmatic work “By the Numbers”. We’re proud to show that our programs and services have touched virtually every member of our community—whether you went to one of the thousands of restaurants, hotels, pools, and body art establishments we inspected, had a visit from one of our prenatal care coordination staffers, received a vaccination, or swam at a beach we tested.

On pages 4 and 5 you can learn more about what our COVID-19 response looked like during the year, including emergency orders, vaccination, testing, contact tracing and support, partnerships and community engagement, data, and communications.

On pages 7 through 9, we highlight ways in which we managed continuity of services while still responding to the pandemic. These programs are wide-ranging, from sexual and reproductive health to animal services to violence prevention. Even with many staff still split between their programmatic work and the COVID-19 response, we were able to serve more clients, streamline procedures, forge new partnerships, apply and receive grants, host focus groups, and more.

2021 was a busy year for us, to say the least, and we’re hopeful for all we can accomplish in partnership with you during 2022.

To stay up-to-date on our work throughout the year, subscribe to our blog and follow us on social media: we’re @publichealthmdc on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.