Eileen White has resigned as an epidemiologist at the Fishers Health Department after a little more than two months on the job.
After resigning, White posted a video on Facebook, which you can view at this link. Her bottom-line message was this: The health experts are sometimes being overshadowed by politics and the health of the public is being harmed.
She then provided an interview with the Indianapolis Star, where the story was framed in a way that made it appear she was blaming Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness for the political interference in local health matters and said she has never seen a health department run like a business, and insinuated that is what is happening in Fishers.
White
“This is absolutely NOT about Mayor Fadness being somehow ‘bad’,” White wrote in a Facebook post Thursday night. “I actually think he’s a reasonable man. I also think the leadership of the health department is not ‘bad.’ I think they lack awareness of how the mayor being involved in meetings regularly and introducing a school board meeting and interjecting over and over isn’t exactly normal. He did not interfere in developing metrics. He did not tell us explicitly what to say. His presence and his level of involvement in health Dept stuff isn’t normal.”
White did explain what led to her resignation.
“[Mayor Fadness’] presence and involvement in a school board meeting interferes with independent messaging of the health department,” White wrote in the Thursday night Facebook post. “It doesn’t allow public health to be trusted and this is the National Issue I wanted to address.”
White adds she will be doing no more interviews. She only consented to the newspaper interview because the reporter told her there would be a story with or without her comments.
Her Facebook page will be her way of communicating her views in the future.