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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, October 22, 2007
Contact:
Dr.
Diana Yu,
Thurston
County
Health Officer, 360-786-5581
Public Health
Employee Wins Statewide Honors
OLYMPIA
– Darrell Cochran of the Thurston County
Public Health and Social Services Department was recently named a statewide
Public Health Leader by the Washington State Public Health Association.
Cochran received the award because of his longtime dedication to
community health issues and his willingness to go “above and beyond” in
finding solutions to public health challenges.
(Below are some excerpts from the nomination letter submitted by
Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Diana Yu.)
Darrell
Cochran began his career in public health in June of 1979, and for more than
28 years he has worked in the “trenches.”
He trained and worked in all the various programs at Thurston County
Environmental Health before settling into his niche in the Food, Pool, School
and Vector program.
Darrell
has also participated on numerous committees at the local, county and state
level. He has taken part in the
Bare Hand Contact Committee, Department of Agriculture Advisory Committee,
ADHOC Safety Committee, Partners in Food Safety, State Food Barrier Protection
Committee, and Food Safety Strategic Planning Committee, just to name a few.
Over
the years Darrell has been involved in the creation of various state
guidelines; the creation of the current School Safety Guidelines with Office
of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Department of Health
Administrative Food Program Self-Assessment and with writing the current State
Code for Food Service. He took the
lead to develop
Thurston
County
’s regulations for Water Recreation Facilities.
When
a public health issue is in the news, you know that Darrell was likely
involved in the assessment and management of the situation, but his name is
rarely mentioned. Sometimes it is
bats in the Governor’s mansion (1997), or mold at some low income apartment
buildings (1999), or 500 people with an illness associated with
Deep
Lake
(1994), or 192 people sickened after a salmon bake (1992). Darrell was ahead
of his time with a warning to the food industry before the E. coli outbreak of 1993 and has been actively involved with the
elimination of bare hand contact with ready-to-eat foods.
(Darrell
Cochran is a Senior Environmental Health Specialist for the Public Health and
Social Services Environmental Health Division.
For interviews, he can be reached at 360-754-3355 x 7524)
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