TN:Shelby Co. Health Dir. shouldn't get to choose her assignments

When the  belt tightening TN lawmakers  voted to reduce the budget for the infant mortality reduction program that begin in 2004  by " cutting the program's $4.6 million budget in half for the fiscal year and  then eliminating it entirely the following year".....Shelby County Health Director, Yvonne Madlock,  did not hide her strong displeasure. 

Later when discussing the distribution of family planning monies, she responded to a question posed by Senator Campfield  who wanted the funds to be administered by her dept.  instead of Planned Parenthood .   He asked if the Health Dept. had a legal obligation  to provide these services. Ms. Madlock replied.....

" Yes, it would be legal for this health department not to provide family planning services,"
"But our mandate is also a mandate to protect the health of the community and protect the least of those in our community," Madlock said, before playing the city's health trump card: infant mortality rates that best those of many developing nations.
"Preventing unwanted pregnancies, allowing families to space their pregnancies, allows us to better control our infant mortality rate."

She does not hide her  animosity at having a project that  enjoyed strong funding for the past  five years cut and being told that she now is responsible for administering a program with funding for a project she preferred  to outsource.  Is this why she is resisting providing this service unlike all  other 94 counties in TN ?  She continues to insist  she will do it on a month  to month basis and refuses to rule out outsourcing it to Planned Parenthood. 

Ms. Madlock  needs to live in the real world where we do our jobs and get over our disappointment when our preferred projects are not funded and assignments are not of our choosing.  

Yet Madlock continues to strong arm her superiors showing  a strong  loyalty to Planned Parenthood.

"Though both she and Planned Parenthood’s Shelby County director, Barry Chase, said on Friday there had been no direct communications between them for several weeks, the bottom line seemed to be that, as Madlock said last week, Planned Parenthood continued to be on her list of hypothetical family service partners."

I encourage Ms. Madlock to look at Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga  and than to remind her of the above quote about the mandate of protecting the health of the community that employs her.




Photo: Commercial Appeal