Ben comes from a family that exemplifies community service. His parents were both Majors with the Salvation Army and Ben grew up, not only participating in community service and outreach with his family, but knowing that that was his calling as well. One of his earliest ventures into serving a community in need was in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. In the weeks following the devastating hurricane and subsequent levee failures and flooding, Ben was there working food service with the Salvation Army providing hot meals to those who needed them. He remembers the days being long and blurring together, but that in doing that work even as an 18 year old, that it was what he wanted to do. Ben also lead the Salvation Army response to dangerous tornadoes that caused significant damage and disruption to operations in Springfield, Illinois in 2006. It was this work that cemented his desire to work in an emergency response capacity.
Ben is the Emergency Response Coordinator (ERC) for the McDonough County Health Department and has worked in that position since 2016. As ERC Ben is responsible for coordinating the activities of the McDonough County Health Department with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness program (PHEP), creating plans and training exercises to ensure that the McDonough County Health Department is ready to respond to a natural disaster or public health emergency. Ben is also the ERC for the Schuyler County Health Department. Ben teaches a community CPR class to certify others in life-saving first aid. He works part-time for an ambulance service and is also a volunteer EMT with the Emmet-Chalmers Fire Protection District spending his free time serving his community in several other capacities.
In February of 2020, the McDonough County Health Department began receiving updates and briefings regarding a novel disease detected in Wuhan China and in less than 2 months the disease had been named a global pandemic, and McDonough County had seen it’s first diagnosed case. Ben’s training and leadership came into play as plans were implemented to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ben was part of the Incident Command team at the both the McDonough County Health Department and the McDonough County Emergency Operations Center (MCEOC) which was mobilized in response to emergencies declared at the Federal, State and Local levels. Ben’s training exercises, and planning paved the way for the coordinated efforts within McDonough County to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, procure and provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to long-term care facilities and municipal offices, coordinate case investigation and contact tracing efforts by McDonough County Health Department staff, and roll-out the mass vaccination clinics in McDonough County that have led to over 16,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine being administered by MCHD staff at their clinics. Often working long stretches with no days off, Ben’s work was pivotal in every aspect of the MCHD response to COVID-19 and Ben continues to be front and center in the McDonough County response to the pandemic even as that response has changed and evolved. Ben says that COVID-19 didn’t change his dedication to working in an emergency response role within public health, but that things he has learned during the pandemic will affect the way he looks at things going forward and that that information and experience is invaluable. “For me, one of the most rewarding things I’ve done is work on the mass vaccination plan for the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine. Working with the county partners to get shots in arms and seeing how grateful people were, let me go home at the end of every day feeling like I made a difference. I never thought that emergency response within a public health capacity would be what I was doing, but the emergency response coordination is something that is growing and you are seeing those positions develop in hospitals and corporations and places that didn’t have them before. Public Health Emergencies only happen on days that end in Y and people are doing a better job of planning and preparing for that.”
In March of 2021 Ben was recognized by his co-workers at MCHD as the 2020 Employee of the Year. He has also been awarded a scholarship to attend the NACCHO (National Association of County and City Health Officials) Preparedness Summit in Atlanta in April. Thank you Ben for your commitment and dedication to the health of McDonough County and its residents.
