Peruvian native now head of R.I County health

George Verastegui traveled halfway around the world on his journey to become the new administrator of the Rock Island County Public Health Department.

The 59-year-old native of Peru began his job this past October, overseeing a staff of 42 and an annual budget of $9.9 million. The Rock Island County Health Department (RICHD) strives to prevent disease, promote wellness of mind and body, protect public health, and prepare for community emergencies.

The department provides a full array of public services, including but not limited to Family Case Management, School Health Link, WIC (women, infants and children) Nutrition, Environmental Health Food Inspections, Vital Health (birth and death certificates), Emergency Preparedness, and Infectious Disease resources.

Verastegui’s long list of degrees includes a medical degree from San Marcos University Medical School (Lima, Peru); a master’s in studies on health policy at San Marcos University; a master’s executive degree in advising and consulting enterprises at Business School EOI (Madrid, Spain), and a master’s of public health at the University of San Francisco (2021).

His wide-ranging career has included as consulting physician for assessment, with regards to economic, efficacy and criteria-based quality health care, to national offices of the Peruvian Social Security Health Services; working for the Peruvian Health Minister as adviser on health insurance and quality of health services, followed by one year as the Health Promotion Executive Director in Lima, Peru.

For five years, he worked at the national office of the Peruvian National Health Services as a primary level provider to undeserved communities implementing public health activities to improve their lifestyles.

Verastegui first moved to the U.S., in 2011, working at a family clinic in Newberry, S.C., then in research for University of South Carolina – Arnold School of Public Health, and a bilingual leader. He also was briefly in charge of cancer programs evaluation for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Cancer Division.

Before coming to Rock Island County, he was senior program manager for the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program at Mendocino County (California) Department of Public Health, for about five and a half years.

That county in northern California has a population of 100,000, less than Rock Island County, but the geographic area is much larger, and has a greater percentage of Latinos than here (about 40%), Verastegui said Monday at his office in Rock Island.

Mendocino County has a smaller health department staff and budget.

Verastegui was looking for a promotion in his career, after he had visited Chicago (for the first time) at Christmas 2022, where his brother and nephew live. His brother is a retired engineer.

“Mr. Verástegui is an effective leader with an extensive public health skill set,” said KJ Whitley, president of the Rock Island County Board of Health, which oversees the public health department. “It’s essential for this leadership role, to be knowledgeable, approachable and proactive to deliver the public health services that our community needs.”

The RICHD has plans to open a new clinic in April based at Rock Island High School, as it does at Moline High. LINK is a comprehensive school linked health clinic with the ability to provide preventive medical care, acute medical care, and referrals. Services are for children and adolescents.

“The idea is to serve students, but it’s open to the general public,” Verastegui said.

Top position eliminated

He succeeded Nita Ludwig, the previous public health administrator, who retired in April 2023 after 25 years of service with the county. The Rock Island County Board of Health (BOH) hired a professional firm, Baker & Tilly, to conduct a nationwide recruitment search to find Ludwig’s replacement.

Janet Hill, interim administrator and chief operating officer, had her position eliminated in January 2024, after working for the health department since 2016. She was the department’s main public voice during the COVID pandemic.

“One of the goals the department had was, I need to modernize the health department, try to keep it more nimble,” Verastegui said Monday. “The structure I found, it helped to meet those goals, so working with Board of Health, we decided to change the structure. Having an operating officer works well for a big company, with more than 100 staff, not for the small department we have.”

The position was eliminated, which did not reflect poorly on Hill’s performance at all, he said. No other health department jobs were cut.

“As a result of an organizational efficiency operations restructure, the Chief Operating Officer position was eliminated under the new PHA’s Board approved operation’s organization chart,” Whitley of the Board of Health said. The PHA (public health administrator) is Verastegui.

One of his concerns is that the budget’s state funding barely covers costs of salaries and benefits. The state supports about 80 percent of the department’s total budget — and the remainder through county taxpayers.

For breast and cervical cancer screenings, the department has just one part-time person. Verastegui’s goal is to have two full-time employees working on that. They need to do more free screenings to improve early detection and treatment, V said.

Some programs are overstaffed, he said, but there is a strong union. The idea is to possibly change some job responsibilities of existing staff, training them in different areas.

Maternal and child health has some inefficiencies, and needs reorganization, Verastegui said.

Merging medicine and business

It helps him as director to have the background with both medical and business degrees.

Vaccination levels in the county for COVID are pretty good — about 73 percent of those eligible, comparable to national figures, Verastegui said.

Early on with the vaccine, there were broad misconceptions about its effectiveness and safety.

“In 2020, it was highly politicized. It wasn’t a good thing for this country,” he said. Some people mistakenly think the vaccine causes illness or implants a microchip, Verastegui said.

The county did surveys of people who got a COVID vaccine and no adverse reactions were found, he said. “Ideally, everyone should get the vaccine.”

One of his goals is to have health inspectors use electronic records (like iPads and laptops) instead of paper, to increase efficiencies.

Verastegui is working with the Quad City Health Initiative on the next community health assessment (the first since before COVID), to get a more inclusive representative sample. That will include more minorities and LGBTQ population, and they hope to distribute surveys by the end of the year.

He also teaches at Augustana College part-time in applied epidemiology. For more information on RICHD, click HERE.

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