Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Dr. Diedra Wuenschel, the Medical Director for the Coryell Health Medical Clinic, will continue to serve as the local health authority for Coryell County.
The Coryell County Commissioners Court voted on her reappointment at a public meeting on Sept. 12. Wuenschel was first appointed in October 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the local health authority, she works closely with the county to help administer local policies, procedures, and response relating to public health.
“What the local health authority does is monitor different infectious disease and public health through the Coryell County to help make sure we are not seeing any trends in infectious disease, and keeping everybody safe to make sure that we are following the appropriate protocols,” Wuenschel said.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially declared the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in May of this year, Wuenschel adds that there is still a need to monitor trends and ensure the proper protocols are in place if an infectious disease outbreak occurs.
“If we start to see trends of things, we look at different sources and where that may be coming from,” she said. “Just helping both here, Copperas Cove, and throughout the county to help ensure that we are keeping everybody healthy.”
Wuenschel said she was led to accept the position following the impact of quarantine and COVID-19 on the community.
“I wanted to help ensure that we got back to normalcy in a healthy way and a safe way,” she said. “I wanted to ensure that I was there to help and to make protocols so that we could get back to school faster and get back to living our lives the way we had prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.”
While there are public health policies at the state level, she emphasizes the importance of having a health authority that can provide guidance at the local level and for specific communities within the county.
“I think it’s important to have somebody in each individual area, because things affect everybody differently,” she said.
Originally from Houston, she moved to Gatesville in 2011 with the goal of helping patients in smaller communities. As a family medicine physician and medical director at Coryell Health, she has a first-hand perspective of how a policy or procedure might affect her patients.
“Those are people that I am seeing every day,” she said. “I am also able to see how any type of policy that we put down can truly affect everybody within the community.”
The county health authority serves a two-year term. Wuenschel is scheduled to be officially reappointed and sworn in by Coryell County Judge Roger Miller next week.
“We are very fortunate as a county to have a local and rural hospital that we work closely with in matters of public health,” Miller said. “With the recommendation from Dr. Jeff Bates, the Coryell Health Chief Medical Officer, we have reappointed Dr. Wuenschel as local health authority.”
