The Cullman County Health Department is preparing some significant upgrades at its Logan Avenue headquarters in west Cullman; changes funded by the Centers for Disease Control and aimed at better equipping the facility to conduct testing and vaccinations for airborne illnesses.

The Cullman County Commission recently authorized chairman Jeff Clemons to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Alabama Department of Public Health ahead of the upgrades, which will be furnished from a $535,000 Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) cooperative agreement grant from the CDC, and administered by the state health department.

Though the health department already serves as a local site for COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, staff have had to improvise the use of its existing interior footprint in order to accommodate those services. The grant will pay for the installation of interior partitions to provide a dedicated vaccine and testing clinic inside the facility; one that can accommodate not only COVID-19-related services, but any similar procedure to test for, and inoculate against, airborne illnesses.

“Public Health never has enough money to do the things we would like to do for the communities we serve, and certainly for our facilities that provide those services,” said Judy Smith, the state department’s Area 2 administrator who oversees the seven-county ADPH region that includes Cullman County.

“This has been an opportunity for us to make some upgrades to the health department building in Cullman to enhance what we’ll be able to do for the public, so it’s welcome,” she added.

“The major portion of this will go to creating a large community room; and, in conjunction with that, creating a COVID service room where we will have ongoing testing and vaccination. It will also facilitate our drive-around potential, so that if we have to do this in the future, we’ll be able to do it in more ways that best serve the community.”

The grant also will allow the health department to acquire a 25 kW generator to keep pandemic services up and running during a local emergency — most vitally, said Smith, by “preserving the viability of the vaccine in the event of an outage.”

Other upgrades will include sealing, coating, and striping the parking lot, updating its lighting with new LED lights, constructing sidewalk improvements, creating new building entrances and exits, and enhancing the building’s security.

Smith said she’s hopeful that work can begin on the improvements within the next month, but stressed that testing and vaccination at the health department is available now on a walk-in basis. “I encourage people, please, to consider being vaccinated,” she urged.

“The best thing we can do is make the vaccine widely available so that we can attempt to get back to some level of normal. Testing and vaccination both are available at the health department in Cullman five days a week, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with no appointment needed for either. We do encourage people to call ahead, so that we can better accommodate them. But it’s not required. We want to do everything we can to let people in Cullman County know that those are services they have access to right now.”

If you plan to be tested or receive the vaccine for COVID-19 at the health department, you can call ahead by phoning 256-734-1030.