To assist jurisdictions impacted by Hurricanes Ian and Fiona, NACCHO was able to launch a special Hurricane Crisis cohort of the Vector Control Collaborative (NACCHO’s long running mentorship program in vector control) in 2024. The following story is from this cohort’s mentee, Beaufort County Mosquito Control, SC. To see more details about the VCC programs in 2024, click here. This post was written by BCMC’s Robert Cartner, [email protected], 843-255-5733. This blog is Beaufort County’s account of the challenges and opportunities they faced through the VCC. To get BCMC’s mentor’s perspective, go to https://www.naccho.org/blog/articles/amcd-vcc-story-2024.

This was the first “interactive” grant our program has participated in and it was an effective educational opportunity for us. The NACCHO staff helped ease the experience for our group as a mentee.

– Robert Cartner, Beaufort County Mosquito Control, SC

Beaufort County Mosquito Control (BCMC) identified the 2024 NACCHO Hurricane Vector Control Collaborative grant as an opportunity to make positive changes to our program. The grant offered the chance for us to partner with a well-established program, [Florida’s] Anastasia Mosquito Control District (AMCD). The goal being to improve our service to the residents of Beaufort County, South Carolina. Following a local site visit from AMCD in June 2024, our program began adjusting our surveillance trapping and established a schedule for insecticide resistance testing.

Lessons Learned

[Through NACCHO’s VCC], our program recognized deficiencies that were possibly reducing our abilities to provide the most effective and efficient service to the residents and visitors of our county. We recognized that we weren’t providing educational opportunities to the residents of our county. We also recognized inefficiencies in the ways we analyzed surveillance data as well as a lack of consistencies in insecticide resistance monitoring.

Next Steps

We are more confident in making control decisions based on our surveillance trapping data. This has allowed us to make our control missions more efficient and provided more time for staff to complete their daily surveillance activities. We have begun establishing internal guidelines for insect rearing and insecticide resistance testing as well as recognizing opportunities for educational outreach.

This was the first “interactive” grant our program has participated in and it was an effective educational opportunity for us. The NACCHO staff helped ease the experience for our group as a mentee. My advice to future groups would be to clearly define what goals they hope to achieve for their program.