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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2020)
Opinion 4A Tuesday, August 18, 2020 Our View State takes important action to protect kids W hat happened to Karly Sheehan of Corvallis should never happen again. She was 3 years old when she died in June 2005 of injuries suffered from her mother’s boy- friend, Shawn Field. The Oregon Department of Human Services and police had investigated suspicions that Karly was a victim of child abuse. They closed the case in December 2004 as unfounded. Pictures showing injuries to Karly were lost. A medical professional with specialized training in child abuse did not evaluate her injuries. The Oregon Legislature took action in 2007. It passed House Bill 3328, unanimously. The law became known as Karly’s Law. The law has been tightened since then, but it basically has three requirements: 1. When conducting an investigation of a child who suffered suspicious physical injury, photo- graphs must be taken immediately. 2. Teams that investigate child abuse must have a medical professional trained in child abuse who is regularly available. 3. Investigators who observe a child with sus- picious physical injury must ensure that such a trained medical professional conducts a medical examination of a child within 48 hours. That’s good. But it’s not good enough. The law must be followed. There needs to be money to ensure the investigations happen that way. Across the state, child advocacy centers, such as the Mt. Emily Safe Center, La Grande, per- form that and other work to protect children from all types of abuse. They are essential. They can’t just close because of the pandemic. Fund- raising for most nonprofi ts has plummeted due to COVID-19. And child advocacy centers only ever got a fraction of the money they need to operate from the state, according to Becky Jones, state executive director for Oregon Child Abuse Solutions. State funding has covered about 17% of their costs, Jones said. But last week, legislators stepped up with bipartisan approval of $1 million in additional funding to child advocacy centers. When you think about where the state and individuals can make smart investments to protect children and invest in Oregon’s future, it can be hard to do better than that. The Mt. Emily Safe Center website is an excellent place to start if you want more infor- mation, www.mtemily.org. Another good place is the website for Oregon Child Abuse Solutions, www.oregoncas.org. Write to us The Observer welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are limited to 350 words and must be signed and carry the author’s address and phone number (for verifi cation purposes only). Email your let- ters to news@lagrandeobserver.com or mail them to the address below. Our View The limits of contact tracing C ontact tracing — until level of uncertainty is the lim- views would at a minimum this year a process ited nature of contact tracer yield additional data. And if familiar mainly to epi- interviews. Oregon Public ever there was a situation when demiologists — is elegant in its Broadcasting and The Ore- more information is welcome, simplicity. gonian recently reported that surely the coronavirus pan- Or so it seemed. contact tracers aren’t asking demic is that situation. The idea is to track the people who tested positive for The purpose isn’t to target spread of communicable dis- COVID-19 whether they’ve bars, restaurants and gyms, eases by interviewing people patronized a bar, restaurant or many of which have been dev- who may be infected and fi nd gym during the period when astated fi nancially during the out who they pandemic. The have had close Responses to (contact tracers) questions, besides Oregon Health contact with and Authority hasn’t the obvious benefi t of potentially identifying thus might have reported any sources of community spread and making it spread the dis- COVID-19 out- ease to. breaks at a bar possible to deal with those sources, could help In some or gym, and businesses by alerting them to potential gaps in cases the poten- the agency has their COVID-19 precautions. tial infectious announced just encounter is six relatively obvious — a person who tests they might have been infectious. small outbreaks at restaurants, positive spends a couple of days Health offi cials from Mult- involving fi ve to 14 infections. in a small house with a group of nomah County told The Ore- But the OHA limits disclosure friends. gonian this question isn’t part of such outbreaks — it doesn’t But the limitations of contact of contact tracing interviews announce ones involving fewer tracing have become apparent because there aren’t enough than fi ve people or ones at busi- in Oregon during the corona- tracers to track potential infec- nesses that employ fewer than virus pandemic. For much of tions based on places the 30. this summer, contact tracers infected person visited, and But the OHA is unlikely haven’t been able to deter- the primary goal is to identify to reveal latent infection pat- mine the source of infection for people who might have been in terns if contact tracers aren’t more than 40% of Oregonians close contact with an infected asking possibly relevant ques- who tested positive. The rate of person. Those people are then tions. Responses to those ques- “mystery” infections recently is asked to voluntarily quarantine tions, besides the obvious ben- even higher in some counties, during the period when they efi t of potentially identifying including 62% in Multnomah might be infectious. sources of community spread County, the state’s most pop- But even if health agencies and making it possible to deal ulous, and 67% in Clackamas, don’t have resources to back- with those sources, could which ranks third in population, track every infected person’s help businesses by alerting according to The Oregonian. movements, conducting more them to potential gaps in their A potential reason for this thorough contact tracing inter- COVID-19 precautions.
