Dr. Aaron Billin, who served as the Park County Public Health Officer for more than 11 years, most notably through the Covid pandemic, is retiring.

Billin has been winding down his responsibilities and easing into retirement. He retired from the Powell Valley Healthcare emergency department two years ago and his last day as the public health officer is Sept. 30. 

He is also a member of Park County Search and Rescue, but said he doesn’t know if he’ll ever leave that role, as he still enjoys it. 

Despite its challenges, Bill said he enjoyed his time as the public health officer as well.

“Probably the single most important information is to realize you’ll learn as much as you’ll teach others,” he said in a Monday interview, “and that back and forth [communication] process is really important when it comes to public health.”

The county is hoping to have a new public health officer to take over next month. 

“It's kind of bittersweet,” he said of leaving. “I mean, I've enjoyed what I've done, but boy, I'm looking forward to being done.”

What does the public health officer do?

Billin had only been working in Powell for a couple of years when he saw a story in the newspaper that the public health officer at the time, Dr. Charles Jamieson, was leaving the position.

Billin applied in 2014, and turned out to be the only applicant. While he had some education in epidemiology in school, he said most of his training has been on the job. 

In the role, Billin said his main duties have been threefold: he advised the county and worked with public health on emergency planning, signed waivers to required vaccines for K-12 public school students and consulted with the county on medical issues in general.

There have been a number of issues he has had to deal with over the years beyond Covid. For instance, lately he’s been dealing with cases of rabies among bats and most recently a raccoon in the county. 

“If there is an outbreak of a communicable disease, whether that is from person to person, sexually transmitted diseases, zoonotic diseases that we catch from animals, we tried to be on top of that and let the public know because they had a right to know,” Billin said. 

During Covid, he started a Park County Public Health Officer Facebook page to better spread information, after initially making personal posts on community pages such as Powell Valley Exchange and Cody Area Classifieds. 

Covid

The Covid pandemic put Billin in the public eye far more than ever before. He said his main goal throughout was to maintain good communications with the public. 

The Facebook page, then, became a way for him to spread the word, and at present there are more than 2,500 followers. 

“With Covid and my Facebook page, that kind of opened up an opportunity to educate the public, which hadn’t been done before, so I think we had a good dialog with the public and answered questions, letting know about outbreaks and letting know about public health issues,” Billin said.

He said as long as people were civil, he was willing to engage with anyone, regardless of whether they agreed or disagreed with his recommendations, which included social distancing and getting vaccinated. 

In the end, he said the experience of Covid was a “two-edged sword.”

“Those that believed in medicine and science, they were appreciative for the information and learned more about public health and epidemiology,” he said. “And those that were of an opinion, largely a political opinion, that they were opposed to public health and vaccines, became more so.

“I'm reminded of a quote from Thomas Sowell. He said, ‘If you want to help someone, you tell the truth. If you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.’ And I think that probably distinguishes a true public servant from a politician.”

Appreciation

Billin was honored by all of the county commissioners Tuesday afternoon. 

Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said that, while he didn’t always agree with Billin’s Covid recommendations, he appreciated his service. Commissioner Kelly Simone had especially heartfelt remarks as, she said, as a physician assistant in Cody and later Powell, she too was on the “front lines of the pandemic.”

“You not only had to give recommendations, but you also served a great number of patients in the emergency room at risk to yourself and to your family, just like the rest of us that had to work on the front lines,” she said. “So that was a double stress that I think you carried with grace, and it was an unprecedented time … So there really wasn't a template to follow to know how to navigate that. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for you for the way that you did navigate something like that.”

The commission has received one application for the position but has yet to make a final decision on Billin's replacement.