Cindy King has been providing guidance to the White County Health Department since they started their pandemic taskforce in 2006, and since the onset of COVID-19, she has worked tirelessly alongside the health department to keep White County safe.
“She was such a vital part of our planning process from the very beginning, and she brings a level of expertise because she is one of the longest-serving nurses in our district,” says White County Director of Public Safety David Murphy. “She brings a lot of knowledge to the profession, and being on the front lines for so long; she can decipher a lot of things that those of us who are not necessarily in the medical field may not know.”
From planning and digging into the facts, to being a rock for the public safety team in White County among uncertain times, King has been essential to the county’s defense against COVID-19.
“She keeps public health a priority, and she always keeps us in the loop, making sure that we are aware of what [the community’s] needs are and how we can provide support to them. She really looks out for the citizens of our community,” Murphy says. “She was our avenue of information to help us make the proper decisions to protect our public, our community, and our first responders.”
Murphy says that she keeps the taskforce and health department level-headed with the relationships she maintains and her knowledge.
“Her leadership and guidance were just what made things work so well, if it hadn’t been for her here in our local health department, there would have been times that we may have been lost as to which way to turn or what kind of direction to go in.”
One of the county’s most prominent challenges was the fast spread of conflicting information from multiple sources, and misinformation spreading through social media. Wrangling misinformation and providing the most recent and medically accurate information became one of the taskforce’s top priorities. “When a message comes from our office in conjunction with the public health office, it has a lot of credibility,” Murphy says. “As long as Ms. Cindy’s in public health, in our community, a lot of people listen to what she has to say.”
Tackling all the information they were receiving, and the information they weren’t wasn’t an easy task. “There were several times where we could not get the information we needed from the state office,” Murphy says. “But we could go to [King], and she could get that information for us, either by her own knowledge and expertise area, or she would know someone within the system that she [could] get the information that we needed to be able to move forward and provide services.”
King’s service to the taskforce, community, and health department, alongside her dedication to the safety of the public, make her a beacon of hope in the uncertain crisis the nation finds itself in.
“I think her service is just phenomenal, not only to our community but to our region, the entire district into the state of Georgia. She brings so much knowledge in her position. And it just makes my job as the emergency manager a whole lot easier when I’ve got expert people right here in the community that I could call and bounce questions and ideas off of,” Murphy says. “It just makes things a whole lot better, and we’re a more well-rounded, better-prepared community for that.”
