Dr. Brian H. Huggins hit the ground running when he joined Monongalia County Health Department as the incoming health officer on April 1.
The health department has been undergoing a strategic plan process and Huggins stepped up to lead two town halls only six weeks after starting his new position.
Huggins was seeing patients on days when retiring health officer Dr. Lee B. Smith, who officially stepped down June 30, was off.
He immersed himself in other health department endeavors, including working toward achieving accreditation through the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), which recently started up again after coming to a halt with the onset of the COVID pandemic.
Plus, three weeks in, West Virginia’s first measles outbreak in 15 years occurred in Monongalia County, and Huggins aided in the response.
He also decided to undertake guidance of five summer interns from the WVU School of Public Health.
“If I had to state my three priorities, one of them is strengthening our partnership with public health education,” said Huggins, a graduate of the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg.
“In order to develop a public health workforce, public health students need experience. One of the first things I did was to connect with the interim deans and program leadership to discuss our current partnership.”
As for Huggins’ second and third priorities at the health department, he lists accreditation and strengthening outreach.
“It’s important that we become certified by a standardizing body,” he said. “They already had started that before I walked into the door.”
Having a larger presence in the media, reaching out to communities and also creating partnerships are some of his plans for expanding outreach, he noted.
One of those partnerships just started this week as Mon Health president and CEO David Goldberg introduced Huggins on the hospital system’s radio segment, Mon Health Talk Radio, which airs at 8:35 a.m. Monday mornings on WAJR. Starting in September, Huggins will take over the show on the last Monday of each month. He will examine public health issues and sometimes host guests of his own.
“We’re really thankful for Mon Health for the opportunity to discuss topics that are important to WJAR listeners,” Huggins said. “We’re also open to input and suggestions from listeners for future shows.”
Anthony DeFelice, executive director of Monongalia County Health Department, was pleased to find such a qualified replacement for Smith.
“Dr. Huggins is board certified in preventive medicine and has a master’s in public health,” DeFelice said. “No other health department in the state of West Virginia has a full-time health officer with this unique training that fits extremely well in public health.
“We feel very fortunate to have a highly trained health officer with a passion for public health on our team.”
A native of Wheeling, Huggins’ took a circuitous route to his current position. After graduating from high school, he worked retail jobs and designed and operated haunted houses for 15 years. He also ran prison tours at the former West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, now a well-known Gothic-style destination for ghost enthusiasts.
He was running a haunted house at the Foggy Bottom Festival of Fright when a theater professor he met there encouraged him to enroll at West Liberty University to work on production sets. He ended up majoring in biology and minoring in theater.
“I didn’t know I wanted to be a doctor until I was at West Liberty,” he said. “My mentors in the biology department, Melinda and Robert Kreisberg, convinced me to look at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.”
Once he toured the campus, he saw how doctors of osteopathic medicine practice a passionate, patient-centered approach.
While at WVSOM, Huggins served as class president his first year, Student Government Association president the second year, and then as the student representative to the Board of Governors his third and fourth years.
When he graduated, he was presented with the National DO Student of the Year award from the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine.
After medical school, Huggins enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, which took care of his medical school bills in exchange for four years of service. He was sent to Eielson Air Force Base In Fairbanks, Alaska for his first assignment.
As the chief of Aerospace Medicine, Huggins spent a lot of his time assessing pilots’ abilities to do the job from a medical point of view as they performed aerobatic maneuvers in the sky and simulated dog fights.
“It gives us the ability to understand the stresses and environment pilots go through, to see if the pilot is capable of doing the job when they develop a medical condition,” Huggins said. “When you have a disease process going on, the best way to understand how it affects a pilot is to actually do the job with them.”
While there, he also managed to find work at a haunted house, where one of the actors ended up being his future wife, Kat Timm of Fairbanks.
They married and he did a three-year stint at a medical unit of NATO in Germany. Upon returning, he did a preventive medicine residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating with a master’s degree in public health.
When COVID hit in 2020, he had just started a residency with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, where his duties included working with the state’s Public Health Preparedness and Response, as well as the Communicable Disease branch.
After 12 years of active duty, he wanted to settle down and return to his home state, although he still serves in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
“We drove from Bluefield to Wheeling and Kat fell in love with West Virginia.”
He worked for Occupational Medicine at the WVU School of Public Health for nearly a year when the MCHD health officer job came open.
“What I have learned since I arrived is that the people who work at Monongalia County Health Department are some of the most passionate people in public health I’ve ever met,” he said. “The resources that are offered are amazing, considering the population size of Monongalia County. It really stands out as a gem.”
