Staff photo by Fritz Busch Brown County Public Health Director Karen Moritz celebrates retirement in the Law Enforcement Center training room Thursday. Moritz served Brown County Public Health for 14 years, three months and worked in public health for 37 years. Brown County Public Health Supervisor Jaimee Brand will become the new county public health director Jan. 3.

NEW ULM — Brown County Public Health Director Karen Moritz was all smiles at a retirement ceremony in the law enforcement center training room Thursday.

Moritz served Brown County Public Health for 14 years, three months. She worked in public health for 37 years in Minnesota and Iowa.

Brown County Public Health Supervisor Jaimee Brand of New Ulm will succeed Moritz on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. Brand has worked for Brown County Public Health for three and one-half years and has five years of public health experience, working in Nicollet County Public Health before coming to Brown County.

“Karen has been a great leader and a good mentor for me. I’ve got big shoes to fill,” said Brand, an Ormsby native.

Brand made the cupcakes that were part of Moritz’ retirement party.

Moritz is hopeful about the public health situation that has become more complicated this winter with the advent of RSV (Respirator Syncytial Virus and influenza in addition to evolving COVID-19 variants as long as people remember to follow guidelines.

“We still have COVID. No doubt about it. It’s become part of our world,” said Moritz. “People are still adjusting. It’s going to take some time. RSV and influenza has stabilized except for the long-term care and schools have more and more people getting it now. If we don’t have any surprises, COVID will become part of our life for a while. if people are careful, test right away and take precautions to not infect people like their family and co-workers if they test positive.”

Moritz said mental health and well being issues grew even prior to COVID.

“After COVID began, those things grew even more and we’ll continue to deal with that for some time,” she added.

Moritz said the most challenging part of her career came when COVID-19 began.

“There were some very long days. Many of us put in extra long hours,” she said. “Our focus in public health is prevention of disease and promotion of health to individuals and communities.”

Moritz said during COVID, public health workers were so busy with the COVID response, they didn’t get to work much on disease prevention and health promotion.

“The public at least somewhat neglected health promotion and a healthy lifestyle, but some people embraced it,” she added in an earlier interview. “Health screening for colon cancer and mammograms and things like that didn’t get done.

We’ve seen a little drop in Brown County and across the nation in child immunizations.”

Moritz said mental health and addiction issues increased prior to COVID causing public health to focus more on public health and well being in all spectrums.

“There are many contributing factors to that. Not just COVID. Other factors were workforce shortages, inflation, cultural and social divides, adding to public stress,” she added. “People already had individual stress too during COVID transition. “The vaping epidemic is still here. We need to continue to promote youth to make good choices. Infectious diseases will never stop. These things are not as serious as the COVID pandemic was, but we still have them.”

Moritz said the public needs to focus on health promotion and public well being.

Her plans now are to rest and relax, travel and spend more time with grandchildren.

Karen’s husband Randy, an outside plant manager at Consolidated Communications in Mankato, is retiring Friday (today). The couple enjoys being outdoors especially hiking.

For more information, visit www.brown.mn.us and www.cdc.gov.

(Fritz Busch can be emailed at fbusch@nujournal.com).