Commissioners make Spokane County Board of Health nominations official

Arielle Dreher, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
·2 min read

Feb. 8—The Spokane County Commissioners officially placed their three nominees on the Spokane Regional Health District Board of Health on Tuesday — but not before some commissioners berated media coverage of their selections and the process as "misinformation."

"The health district board is a community board, not a medical board," Commissioner Al French said during the commissioners' meeting Tuesday. "This differentiation is critical to this process."

He said there's been a lot of "misinformation and political posturing" about the forming of the new board.

The commissioners changed the structure of their board and are appointing new members to comply with a new state law, authored by local lawmaker Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.

The new law does not go into effect until July, but commissioners said they wanted a new board in place in order to begin working on the district's budget.

Earlier this year before narrowing down the list of applicants to arrange interviews, there were disagreements among the commissioners and Millwood Mayor Kevin Freeman about who should represent "public health, health care facilities and providers," as the new law calls for.

French and Kerns wanted to interview naturopaths, while Freeman wanted to interview medical doctors. Ultimately, after interviews, when Freeman's top picks were not on French or Kerns' short lists, he voiced support for one of the naturopathic physicians, who will now sit on the Board of Health.

Alycia Policani, a licensed naturopathic physician and president of Evergreen Naturopathic, will represent public health, health care facilities or providers.

Chris Patterson, the community solutions adviser at Washington Trust Bank who worked as a regional administrator for the department of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, will represent consumers of public health.

Charlie Duranona, an outreach specialist to homeless veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs, will represent community stakeholders.

The next board meeting is scheduled for Feb. 24.

Arielle Dreher's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is primarily funded by the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, with additional support from Report for America and members of the Spokane community. These stories can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.