Door County Medical Center’s Dr. Jim Heise is being honored for his work helping the community get through the pandemic. The hospital’s chief medical officer is the recipient of the 2020 Rural Health Ambassador award from the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative. Dr. Heise and Door County Public Health Director Sue Powers were weekly staples during the early stages of the pandemic, producing Facebook Live videos where they gave updates on the pandemic and answered COVID-19 related questions from the public. In a previous life, Dr. Heise was in the video production field, but even he admits he never thought he would lean on the medium so much in his medical career.

Since the pandemic started, Door County Medical Center’s COVID-19 pandemic videos on Facebook had approximately 75,000 views in addition to other outreach efforts in print, television, and radio. Heise says communication will continue to be a key as the community addresses the pandemic moving forward.