Where Are They Now, Jim Koval

Jim Koval smiling at a camera wearing corrective lenses

Are you and your family prepared for an unexpected disease or virus? Family Preparedness Coordinator and Local Liaison, Jim Koval, has your back. Whether it is a concern about the flu or a foodborne illness, Jim has been serving the communities in Michigan for more than 20 years. But with continuously evolving public health concerns, what has he been working on since his Our Stories profile?

Although Jim continues to provide assistance to local health departments and maintain the family preparedness system for the Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP), he has managed to implement new programs for his office as well as the Community Health Emergency Coordination Center (CHECC) all while tackling the Ebola scare.

Because anyone can get sick at any time, the OPHP and the CHECC needed to find a way to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week without overworking the employees. In an effort to find a solution, Jim created a new duty officer on-call program in 2011. The on-call program allows people to reach public health experts outside of normal business hours for issues such as an animal bite or a foodborne illness outbreak that cannot wait until the next business day.

Don’t stop there! Read the rest of Jim’s Where Are They Now story to learn more about how he handled the Ebola scare last Fall and what he is doing to improve public health.