Linna Li: New top doctor ready for the challenge

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She may be young for a medical officer of health, but Dr. Linna Li is ready for her latest challenge.

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“I’m up for it. I’m pumped about it,” Li, 35, said in an interview after the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit board welcomed her at its first in-person board meeting last Thursday.

The board recently chose Li to fill the vacancy left by the retirement, at the end of August, of longtime medical officer of health Dr. Paula Stewart.

While she is now the health unit’s top doctor and chief executive officer, Li remains acting medical officer of health until her appointment gets official approval from the provincial health ministry, a formality that generally takes months.

“The rubber stamp has not yet landed,” she quipped at the board meeting.

Her immediate priority is the recovery of the local health unit, as an organization, from the tumultuous years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My greatest focus for now is the health of the organization, just because there’s been a seismic shift in the way the organization works,” she said.

“When you’re in the middle of an emergency, you just do,” she added.

Now, with the pandemic in what she calls the “post-emergency phase,” it’s time to pick up the pieces and attend to staff’s mental health, said Li.

She also plans to oversee a return to the kind of work the health unit was doing before the pandemic, like site inspections and health promotion.

Li told the board last week the intense focus on COVID has prevented the health unit from collecting the necessary data on the tri-county area’s broader health picture.

“We have new health concerns and emerging health needs,” she said, pointing for instance to the addictions crisis.

“We will be resuming a lot of the work that we’ve been doing,” said Li.

“That transition takes time and we’ll be working through it.”

A native of China, Li moved to Canada with her parents when she was five years old. She grew up in Regina, SK.

Li has a medical degree from the University of Western Ontario (Windsor campus) and a Masters of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

She did a residency in public health and preventive medicine at Queen’s University, at which time she completed a rotation with the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark health unit.

She has also worked at Toronto Public Health and the Grey Bruce Health Unit.

Li acknowledged that a physician will typically take on the role of medical officer of health later in his or her career. What often happens, she notes, is the individual spends some years as an associate medical officer of health, a position that tends to exist more in larger centres rather than smaller health units such as this one.

Li has chosen to take the top position early, in a setting she finds attractive.

“I’m not a big-city person,” said Li, who welcomes the opportunity to get to work in this type of health unit.

Li takes over the helm of a health unit that has consistently ranked above its peers for its COVID-19 vaccination uptake. Now, with the new bivalent booster being rolled out to the general adult population, and a potential new wave of COVID beginning, she will oversee still more messaging aimed at getting people vaccinated.

Li is conscious of a growing vaccine fatigue, and persisting vaccine resistance in a segment of the public.

“I do respect that movement, but I’m not afraid of it,” she said.

Li hopes to engage with as many people as she can, enhancing trust in the institutions of public health, and not shying away from science-driven policy.

“It’s not that we’ve got to be afraid of them, it’s that we’ve got to continue our work despite what doubts there are out there and what criticisms there are out there,” she added.

Rzajac@postmedia.com