LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — After more than a year of Lake County being without a permanent Public Health officer, the Board of Supervisors has hired a doctor who previously led Mendocino County’s health department during the pandemic and now works for Santa Barbara County.

Following a closed session discussion on Aug. 15, the Board of Supervisors emerged to announce that it had appointed Noemi C. Doohan, MD, Ph.D., MPH as Public Health officer, and then voted unanimously in open session to approve a one-year renewable employment agreement contract with her.

The appointment is effective Sept. 1.

Doohan served as Mendocino County’s Public Health officer on a part-time basis from July 2019 to May 2023.

That job overlapped with her position as the chief medical officer for the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department, where she was hired in October.

She also previously was a public health medical officer for the California Department of Public Health.

Medical Board of California records show that she graduated from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2003.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Mills College, a Master of Public Health from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Doohan will provide “Public Health officer services” for a one-year period, with an option to renew.

She will be paid the annually renewable not-to-exceed amount of $290,000, as well as a $20,000 hiring incentive, according to county documents. In addition, Doohan will receive employee benefits through the county.

Deputy County Administrative Officer Matthew Rothstein told Lake County News that the contract amount was negotiated and is annually renewable on completion of a performance evaluation. He said it’s not associated with a particular step for the Public Health officer position.

The county’s job description for the Public Health officer says that the position’s annual salary is $265,000.

Doohan will report directly to the Board of Supervisors, the appointing authority, as the job description says.

Rothstein confirmed that previous Public Health officers also have reported directly to the board, not the Health Services director, noting, “The PHO does work closely and collaboratively with the Health Services/Public Health team.”

California counties are bound by state law to have health officers in place to enforce local health orders and ordinances, and state regulations and statutes relating to public health.

Doohan will be the first Public Health officer not serving on a temporary basis since Dr. Erik McLaughlin resigned in June of 2022, as Lake County News has reported.

McLaughlin’s three-and-a-half-month tenure was the shortest of any permanently appointed Public Health officer in Lake County in 20 years. At the time of his hire, he wasn’t licensed to practice medicine in the state of California.

After McLaughlin’s departure, the county hired Dr. Gary Pace, who had held the Lake County Public Health officer position during the pandemic, to take on the role again for a short period of time.

On Sept. 13, the supervisors appointed Dr. Karl A. Sporer as interim Public Health officer for a six-month term, in an amount not to exceed $6,000 a month. Sporer lives in Sonoma County and works in Alameda County.

The board amended that contract to extend it an additional six months at its Feb. 7 meeting.

Seeking options

This isn’t the first time the county of Lake has contracted with Doohan for health-related services.

At its Nov. 8 meeting, the board unanimously approved a contract with Doohan for a Lake County Public Health officer mentor program in response to having had few, if any, candidates for the position, out of 110 potential candidates identified across the state by a county-hired recruiter.

Some of that reluctance was attributed to the political nature of the job, which also had come under more fire during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that time, County Administrative Officer Susan Parker said Doohan wasn’t interested in the Public Health officer job.

That mentor program contract called for Doohan to be paid a consulting rate of $250 per hour for three to six months, with a not-to-exceed amount of $25,000.

In her report to the board for the Aug. 15 meeting, Parker said that the county has not been able to find a permanent full-time Public Health officer since Pace left the position in April of 2021, “despite an aggressive nationwide search,” and outreach to professional associations, the California Department of Public Health and California Conference of Local Health Officers.

“None of these efforts attracted an enduring and permanent Public Health Officer. Describing this position as, ‘Difficult to Fill,’ is an understatement; the reasons are numerous,” Parker wrote in her memo to the board.

“Strains of the COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented turnover in the Public Health professions. What had been crucial and largely behind-the-scenes roles were suddenly thrust into the spotlight. With the overwhelming workload that came in initial pandemic response, long hours in the face of ever-changing information, many long-time practitioners understandably burned out; late career professionals also retired in significant numbers,” Parker wrote.

Following the departure of Dr. Karen Tait, who served from April 2008 to December 2017, no Lake County Public Health officer has served for longer than 20 months. The longest tenure has been that of Pace, who filled the role from Aug. 2019 to April 2021, Parker said.

Parker said there have been more than 10 changes in staffing of the Public Health officer role over a period of five and a half years.

Sporer advised the county that he couldn’t continue in the job past Sept. 30 and hoped to end the job sooner than that if possible, according to Parker’s report.

Referring to the contract with Doohan, Parker said, “Providing stability in the Public Health Officer role for a period of one year, with the option to renew, will provide critical support to the Health Services Department and broader community.”

There had been concerns over McLaughlin — who lived in Nevada — not being in Lake County for some key inspections and work that requires an on-site presence.

Doohan, who lives in Solvang, will be required to be in-person full-time for four of her first six weeks on the job. For the following month, she must be in-person for two weeks and can be remote for two weeks.

That will be followed by one week full-time in person and three weeks remote per month for the remainder of the contract.

Doohan will be responsible for developing a two-year Public Health officer workplan for the board’s approval and can perform other “current contractual obligations” if they don’t conflict with Lake County employment policies.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.