Central Virginia Health District’s new director ready to lead

As Dr. Kerry Gateley settles in as the new director of the Central Virginia Health District, he’ll be diagnosing the public health of his new community.

He’s looking to see if what’s been done in the past is the route that should be taken in the future. He’s asking questions — why is this done this way, and not another? Should it be done at all?

The issues in public health are changing. “It’s happening all across the country,” said Gateley, who stepped into the top public health official spot in mid-July.

“There’s a lot to public health that people don’t see,” said Gateley. He comes to the Lynchburg area from West Virginia where he led the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department for five years.

There, he oversaw about 45 employees and two localities. In Central Virginia he oversees about 115 employees in the health departments in Lynchburg and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell.

“You are going to have a dynamic leader. He’s very good,” said Dr. Steve Artz, a Charleston endocrinologist and former chairman of that local health board.

Gateley is the first male to hold the director’s post in Lynchburg since the early 1970s. He succeeds Dr. Katherine Nichols, who was appointed following the 2003 retirement of Dr. Joanna Harris.

Gateley arrives at a time when many of the health services once provided by the Central Virginia Health District are now available elsewhere, and new responsibilities are emerging.

He’ll be looking at those kinds of issues as part of his community assessment of public health needs.

“There is the tendency to keep doing things, programs, whatever, long after the reason for them.”

While many people still think of health departments as providers of last resort for medical care, Gateley said, “Our function ought to be to make sure that the care is available, and make sure the services people need are there. If we have to provide it ourselves … then we should do that.”

Expectations of public health duties were altered by the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and anthrax-by-mail killings that followed.

“I think people in public health suddenly found everyone from the FBI, the military, to local police, postal inspectors, and everyone else looking to people in local public health, and even the CDC, asking ‘What do we do now?’”

For public health, Gateley said, “It’s kind of a new world, and we do have a role, so we’ve taken it on.”

The health department sees the big picture for the locality, from vaccinating children to inspecting restaurants and issuing septic tank permits. Its staff needs to be on the scene in the community, he said.

He’s met with other health providers since he’s been here.

“I realize, very much, that I am inter-dependent with any number of organizations,” he said. “We can’t get our job done and operate independently, if by independent we mean we set our own course without regard to what anybody else thinks.”

Gateley knew from his youth that he wanted a career in medicine.

Born and educated in Tennessee, his medical degree is from the University of Tennessee at Memphis.

Initially interested in internal medicine, he found “I was coming in at the end of things — end stage disease — kidneys, lung, heart — already damaged, and I was just trying to keep people alive to make them as comfortable, and allow them as much daily activity, as possible.

“I found that frustrating.”

Much of the illness was unnecessary, he said. “I wanted to get in on the other end, when people were still healthy and see what I could do to keep them healthy.”

He did his residency in public health and general preventive medicine at the University of South Carolina in Columbia where he also earned a master’s degree in public health.

Gateley started out as director of the tuberculosis control program for the Tennessee Department of Health and was later HIV-AIDS program director.

Gateley, certified by the American College of Physician Executives, worked for six years in a hospital system near Nashville, eventually serving as vice president of clinical services.

He was coming into public health from a different angle, he said. “I still wasn’t a clinician, but my job was to supervise the services the hospital was delivering, to make sure they were effective.”

Gateley worked for five years at the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, but left in July following his refusal to cooperate with an effort to relocate the health department to what he considered an inappropriate area so a commercial hotel could be built at the vacated spot.

Gateley was under fire for not moving quickly. The local government cut the health department budget by $100,000. The issue received heavy media attention.

Gateley said he made an ethical choice. He resigned in May, effective in July.

“I think it is important for people to understand that I won’t do differently for politicians than I will for the average citizen. The person who comes here with no money — I’m going to work just as hard for that person as (for) someone who holds the purse strings.”

Gateley said he refused to set a precedent that “if they don’t like my decision, just cut the funding until I come around.”

Since the health department could not remain open without a health officer, and no applicants had experience in the field, the only available physician who had the essential background agreed to help out 10 hours a week until the job was filled. She is Gateley’s wife, Dr. Laura Gateley.

A family practice physician, she has remained in West Virginia so that their daughter, now entering her senior year in high school, could graduate with her class.

The Gateleys have two other children, a daughter in college and a teenage son.

One of the reasons Gateley accepted the job at Central Virginia Health District, he said, is that “it is a good place for a family.”

“I like the community, I like living here,” he said. “I’m looking forward to bringing my family here.”