PIGGOTT

MARQUETTE — Sometimes it’s the right thing to do, even during a pandemic.

Dr. Kevin L. Piggott is stepping down from his position as medical director of the Marquette County Health Department to focus on family and community activities.

He began an interim position in September, succeeding Dr. Teresa Frankovich, who moved to California. In January, he become medical director. Piggott also had been medical director from 2009-11.

“I had been working contractually with the health department, working on an opioid project, essentially looking at the opioid prescription patterns in the (Upper Peninsula),” Piggott said of his recent work. “I’m trying to have positive effects on reducing the number of opioid complications.”

Before that U.P. project, Piggott had been trying to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, having been scheduled to travel to that African island country in February.

So, he agreed to become the interim director from September through January so he could prepare for his two-year Peace Corps stint.

However, in November, Piggott was notified he didn’t receive medical clearance.

“Really, it comes down to, for a 60-year-old male who had high blood pressure, they felt I was too high-risk for a cardiac event, even though I’ve never had a cardiac event,” Piggott said. “But I have to realize that in Madagascar, if something like that were to occur, they’d have to fly you to South Africa, and they felt that that was something they could not take on, even though I was willing to take that risk.”

Since that fell through, he took on the part-time position of MCHD medical director, which entails 16 hours of work per week.

“I essentially came out of retirement then to take on a part-time position, which very rapidly became far more than part-time,” Piggott said.

The county health department, he noted, still has to continue with its usual activities during the COVID-19 crisis.

“But there’s no question that COVID drives predominantly what I do because of the fact it’s an infectious disease and I’m a physician, all of the things that go into that, but we still have to deal with all the other diseases that we get,” Piggott said. “We deal with giardias and chlamydias and blastomycosis, all sorts of infectious diseases.”

Piggott noted that as he approached retirement, he made the decision to make his wife Lori and his family his top priority — something that isn’t always possible as an on-call physician.

His current position as medical director, he stressed, still is 24/7, even though it’s only a part-time one.

“That creates its own challenges when you’ve kind of promised your family and your wife that you would not be doing that,” Piggott said.

His plans include serving on boards for such organizations like the West End Health Foundation and the Upper Great Lakes Family Health Center, and being involved in Communities That Care and other public health-related groups.

On a more personal level, Piggott wants to continue his woodworking and gardening, among other pursuits. He also plans to perform additional volunteer work with his wife, although he acknowledged she too has seen coronavirus-related difficulty, having had to travel back from Puerto Rico to Key West, Florida, during the pandemic.

Piggott said the MCHD is looking for his replacement during an unprecedented time that has opposing sides disagreeing on how to handle COVID-19.

“I think much of the nation, much of the state, there is a lot of division, and that’s also what has created a lot of problems, and for me personally in the context that as a person working in public health, we are trying to follow what the public wants,” Piggott said.

This much division can make the county health department’s job difficult.

“How do we do what the public wants of us?” Piggott asked.

His background involves general preventative medicine and public health, he said, but he realizes the coronavirus is new — and that means new guidance and recommendations.

Executive orders also come down from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Thus, the county health department has a moving target.

“Not infrequently, unfortunately, we get criticized, and sometimes it just seems to be pure mean intent,” Piggott said. “It’s hard to deal with, and that’s certainly not our intent.”

Even though it has hard-working medical professionals, the Marquette County Health Department is small, he stressed, so the workload can be overwhelming.

“People aren’t very kind, and it makes it more difficult,” Piggott said.

Controlling the information — specifically, not releasing it — to control the population is one accusation against the health department, one that he refutes.

“I have no desire to control the population,” Piggott said.

The health department releases the information it can, but it cannot release protected health information that is contrary to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, he said.

Another problem is contact tracing.

“People won’t give us any information and they hang up on us,” Piggott said. “We can’t be very effective to contain this virus if people are not willing to talk to us and review the information that they can in regards to who they’ve been around and who might be exposed, so that becomes challenging also.”

More information on COVID-19 is available at mqthealth.org, which includes testing information and other resources.