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Katie Towns has served as acting director for the past five months.
SBJ file
Katie Towns has served as acting director for the past five months.

Katie Towns named permanent health director

Posted online

Katie Towns, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department's acting director for the past five months, has been permanently named to the position.

City Manager Jason Gage formally selected Towns as director of health, effective July 18, according to a news release issued this morning.

"Over the years, Katie has been a highly skilled leader for the health department," Gage said in the release. "She has also done a terrific job in the acting director role and carries with her the highest level of confidence from our community health care providers."

Towns succeeds former Health Department Director Clay Goddard, who retired earlier this year to take a job as senior director of public health transformation for St. Louis-based Missouri Foundation for Health.

Towns has served as assistant director of the Health Department since 2015. In her work at the Health Department, she helped lead efforts to ban smoking indoors and raised the age to buy tobacco to 21.

She becomes permanent director of the Health Department amid a surge in COVID-19 cases brought on by the delta variant.

"Eventually, we will emerge from this pandemic, and I am sure that we will be stronger than we ever have been before," Towns said in the release. “I fell in love with this work because the basis of public health is to make life the best it can be."

As Health Department director, her salary is $145,000, said city spokesperson Cora Scott, noting a national search was conducted for the position.

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Is she even a Doctor? Or is she a “political” health director? Lets hope she makes decisions based on REAL science and not “democrat” Fauci science. You do not get rid of viruses. You do not hide from viruses. Masks do not work…. AT ALL! HERD IMMUNITY is the only reason there is still a human race! They know this. Lockdowns are INSANE! IF you disagree with the above comments, I would suggest you read the Fauci emails. Read the Stanford University mask study! You can’t “Google” them. They are Biden regime Communists. They censor anyone and anything that does not toe the party line. You have to “duck duck go” them. Critical thinking has never been more important than now! “Cases” mean NOTHING! 99.87% survival rate. Thats all you need to know!

Friday, July 23, 2021
user13752

Congratulations Katie! An excellent choice.

Friday, July 23, 2021
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