CHICO — As professional journeys go, Butte County’s public health officer took the long way here. How he’s listed on department letterhead — Dr. David Canton, DO, MPH, JD, Health Officer — gives a glimpse, but his path is more extensive than his string of titles.
Canton Yes, Canton is a physician with a law degree and a master’s in public health. He’s also an Army veteran who served 13 years as a senior medical officer for the U.S.
Coast Guard and 15 with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
He’s also worked as chief medical officer for the National Disaster Medical System and the Shasta Community Health Center; medical director for the Stanislaus County Medical Reserve Corps; vice president of medical affairs at Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock; public health officer for Merced County, and primary-care chair at California Health Sciences University. He was heading into retirement in 2021 when he got a call about the public health officer position in Butte County. Canton succeeded Dr.
Bob Bernstein on an interim basis at first, then took the job on a regular basis. (Apropos of the pandemic era, he primarily telecommuted.) He’s back to interim status as the Public Health Department recruits a successor for him.
Local residents have heard about him, most recently for a series of public health emergencies he’s declared during this summer of wildfires. Rarely, though, have they heard him. Canton hasn’t cut as prominent a profile as Bernstein or Dr.
Andy Miller at the COVID-19 peak. Last week, he spoke with this newspaper via Zoom on a range of issues affecting county communities: fires, coronavirus, shigella and more. Here are highlights from the half-hour Q&A.
Q: You recently put out two emergency declarations because of the fire, and COVID — anecdotally and statistically — is going up. Is everything tied to the mask right now? A: I think we’re going to wait and see where things are with COVID. What it looks like is COVID, influenza and RSV have been tied together as we come into fall now.
We’ve had a little bit of a surge in COVID for the summer, but not overly concerning; the mutations of the COVID virus seem to be blunting (its severity), so it’s not as virulent as it was two or three years ago when we were deep into COVID. In Butte County, we still have (guidance) for the health care workers to mask or vaccinate against influenza. We don’t anticipate expanding that to include COVID at this time, but that wouldn’t be out of (the scope of) possibility, depending on the situation and vaccines that are available.
I’m relatively optimistic going into the fall. As you mentioned, we’ve had several fires — we started out kind of small, but with the Park Fire being the second-biggest single-source fire in California history, there’s a lot of devastation. Burned structures create hazardous material; downed trees where people are trying to get back to their property and clean things up, that creates a hazardous situation in itself.
From people trying to trim branches, we end up with chainsaw accidents, or people doing things in the heat that they’re not used to doing. That’s what we’re looking for with those emergency declarations. But I’m also very concerned about the emotional trauma people have experienced.
This is not a new experience for us, unfortunately. People have been evacuated several times over the years. We’re trying to stress emotional health and taking breaks, too, as people get back into cleanup, because that can be just as overwhelming as a physical injury or hazardous exposure.
Q: For exposure to smoke, did we get a break in our county? A: Absolutely right. We had favorable winds, so we had a little smoke in the Chico area, but our air quality never got really bad like it has in the past. Q: That’s what people tend to think about as the health emergency from a fire, the respiration — but you’re also talking about the perspiration.
A: Yeah; people want to get back in and dig through (burnt areas) to find what they can save and restore. In the process, they stir up hazardous materials in the ash of things that burned. That can be very problematic, and we distribute a lot of (educational) material to people on how to manage that.
Fortunately in Butte County — anywhere in the fire — we haven’t had any deaths. For over 400,000 acres burned to not have a single casualty is a real blessing. Q: The fires, and maybe COVID again, have been the elephant in the room.
Are there other things people should be paying attention to now from a public health perspective? A: Yes. We had our first West Nile case a few weeks ago, but I don’t think people picked up on that because the fire was front and center in everybody’s mind. We’ve had two cases now in humans.
Fortunately, we’re down from last year because it’s been a drier year, but we’re starting to see West Nile infections, so people want to take actions — drain standing water, use DEET (insect repellant), wear long sleeves and long pants if you have to be out in the morning time or at dusk when mosquitos are active to help prevent bites — until we get through this time of the year. Mpox (monkey pox) seems to be on the rise in Africa; we’ve seen some slight increase in California, but not worrisome. We had shigella outbreak in Butte County, but I think that’s on the downturn; we’re watching that closely.
And we always want to remind people to use good hand washing, good hand hygiene, even in times when we’re not talking about GI infections and spread of those kind of diseases; that’s how we prevent outbreaks to begin with. Related Articles Health | Services begin at Butte County’s Sobering Center Health | How little Denmark got homegrown giant Novo Nordisk to lower Ozempic prices Health | Small-town patients face big hurdles as rural hospitals cut cancer care Health | Trans care debate influenced by misinformation, doctors say Health | Social media bans could deny teenagers mental health help Q: What else would you like people to know? A: The most important thing for people of Butte County to know is that they’ve got a fantastic health department looking out for their well-being. A lot of people don’t necessarily agree with everything the health department does, but they have a dedicated staff that are committed to the community and the constituency of Butte County, that are doing everything possible to provide every citizen in the county the opportunity to live the best, healthiest life possible.
A lot of counties aren’t able to say that. It’s something that people aren’t probably aware of, but it’s something they can be really proud of..
