EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – After 14 years of dedicated leadership of the Eau Claire City-County Health Department, Lieske Giese will be stepping down as Director and Health Officer of the health department at the end of the year.
WEAU’s Bob Gallaher sat down with Giese as she reflects on her tenure helping prevent disease and injury in her hometown.
“What I worry about in our world is that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how do we make sure that the community is healthy for each other,” Giese said.
For more than a decade, Lieske Giese has been guiding health policy in the Chippewa Valley, an advocate for the health of people who struggle in our community.
“It’s super important to me to be available and to talk from a science-based perspective, to be a voice. I felt privileged to be able to do that and that there were partnerships that existed between healthcare, between peer local health departments, with our business community, to really lean in and think about how do we do that together, “Giese said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Giese became a fixture in households throughout Western Wisconsin, helping navigate our community through a novel crisis with unchartered health concerns.
“There was a lot of learning during COVID, and in any situation like this, we have to pause and say, what did we do well? Where did we struggle? And that absolutely is part of how we’ll approach the next step. We’re seeing that a little bit in measles right now. That is an incredibly communicable disease, and I think people don’t realize how, if we don’t have vaccinated populations, it’s a dangerous disease,” Giese said.
As Giese prepares for the next chapter in her medical career, she is worried about health leaders that don’t rely on best practice for health care and immunizations.
“It’s really clear from history that having vaccines in this country and across the world have saved countless lives. It is one of our success stories, and that success has meant that some people haven’t seen some of these diseases in a very, very long time. I would guess that a vast majority of primary care providers in Eau Claire have never seen the measles. And that’s because we have done a really good job with a really effective vaccine,” Giese said.
Giese says building partnerships with business and community leaders in the Chippewa Valley is something she is proud about as she prepares to leave the health department. Her focus on public health as a whole has always been her main focus.
“It’s how do we make sure that we create a community that makes it possible to walk and bike. Or we have communicable disease prevention so I can go to the movie theater and I can go out to eat and have safe food. So that’s our goal in public health, that we have safe community,” Giese said.
The health department has begun the recruitment process for the next department director/health officer to lead the largest health department in Western Wisconsin.
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