VIGILANCE AGAINST PESTILENCE Getting out the Message for our Mosquito Control District
	NOVEMBER 2005

by Deborah Bass
Photos by Russell Byrne

Mosquitoes are the number one killer of human beings in the world, rivaled only by tuberculosis and AIDS. Of course, like most people, I didn’t know this until I started working for the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District (District).

Fighting the Bite
In 1926, the salt-water marsh mosquitoes in the county were so numerous that they were infecting residents with encephalitis and malaria. During peak mosquito season, local schools were closed because children’s arms were reportedly “blackened with mosquitoes”; housing markets failed; and some areas in the county were considered uninhabitable.

In desperation, county residents rallied together to form what was initially called the “Mosquito Abatement District,” and is now called the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District (District). Residents voted to tax themselves to ensure their health and welfare and the same is true today. If you can walk out in your back yard to look at the moon or go fishing on Big Break without being bitten numerous times by those relentless mosquitoes, you have the District to thank.

I’m the Public Affairs Manager for the District. One of my roles is educating the public about who we are and about the very important work we do. My job became both easier and more important a few years ago when the West Nile Virus outbreak crossed like a wave across the United States from New York to California. This mosquito-borne disease can cause illness and death among people and animals and is spread by mosquitoes. The only way to combat the disease is to kill the mosquitoes that can transmit it. That’s what we’re here for.

Some people find our name — Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District —confusing. They get stuck on the “vector” part. The word simply refers to any animal or insect that can transmit disease or cause discomfort. As a public health agency, we have services for vectors other than mosquitoes, such as yellow jackets, Africanized honey bees (killer bees), ticks, rats, mice, and skunks.

People also tend to be confused by the “Contra Costa” part of our name. We’re not really part of the county administration, but are a special district — like a water district or a fire district. We simply provide service for all of Contra Costa County.

Home Town Girl — Wife, Mother, and Student
I’m glad to be serving the area where I live. I have lived in Antioch for most of my 43 years. I married Ron Bass, also from Antioch, and an avid fisherman. He takes our boat sometimes 50 miles out into the ocean for whatever the catch of the day is.

It’s been 25 years now since our first date — and our lives together get better all the time. Ron really is a talented fisherman and I love to go on fishing trips with him. However, as I grow older I find that I’m developing a renewed reverence for life. All the time my husband is praying for a hit, I’m praying for a miss. He usually wins and our freezer is stocked full of salmon, tuna, flounder, halibut, and sturgeon. I win when Ron fires up the grill and dinner is served!

My high point in any fishing trip is the moment I can release our unused bait back into the water. I always have a Finding Nemo sort of high as I watch those little creatures return to their natural habitat; they have a chance at freedom if they make it to the bottom!

Ron and I have two boys —16 and 18 years old. For the past 10 years or so, we have been raising our nephews – 16 and 19 years old. They are my sisters’ kids and actually our nephews up both sides of our family tree because my sister married my husband’s brother. I’ve always felt phenomenally lucky to have these two great guys as part of our family and feel privileged to have been a part of theirs.

I was fortunate enough to stay at home until the children were in school fulltime. During the years when they were young, I took classes at LMC and eventually earned an AA degree. Once the children got into school fulltime, I attended Cal State Hayward fulltime and graduated with a degree in Mass Communications. I know now that no other career would have suited me so perfectly.

My dream was to graduate with honors and I didn’t want our decision to raise our nephews to change that. Like many women, I tried to do it all. During those two years, I spent 2-4 hours a day commuting to Hayward, studying from 9 p.m. to midnight, or whatever it took, only to wake up at 5 a.m. and start all over. It was difficult. I was caring for four children, in three schools, all on radically different schedules. Thank goodness for my supportive family. I don’t know how I would have faired without them.

I worked really hard in school. Since I was attending at an age older than most of the students, I felt I needed an edge in the post-college world. An extremely goal-oriented person anyway, I had always dreamed of graduating with honors, the colorful ribbons and medallion against the stark black robe; a symbol of my personal best. My dream came true when I graduated in 1997, magna cum laude and first in my major. Getting that degree under the circumstances was the hardest thing I ever did.

Extreme Makeover
When I began working for the District, almost seven years ago, I was really fortunate to have senior manager who support my ideas of growth and change, and appreciated my enthusiasm. There seemed to lie at my feet a whole world of opportunities for me to put into practice the very things that I had just learned in college.

Most graduates in my field have to “pay their dues” by spending three or four years at an agency doing routine kinds of tasks. In my case, however, I was able to develop an integrated public relations strategy right from the start.

My position was originally called “Community Education Specialist” and the program consisted mainly of teaching about mosquitoes to schoolchildren and at fairs and special events.

I was very lucky that the District had conducted research prior to my arrival to determine how effectively the District was communicating with our constituents and to what extent they knew about our district and our services. We learned that our tactics were the least-effective methods of communicating to our public.

After 75 years in mosquito control, we learned that nearly three out of every four Contra Costa County residents still didn’t know that mosquitoes could transmit disease. Even more disquieting was the discovery that 63 percent of our residents didn’t even know we had a mosquito control program, even though they paid for our services through their property taxes. The more we controlled mosquitoes, the less people realized there were mosquitoes to control.

I went to work immediately to develop a public relations strategy using all of the skills I had just learned, such as graphic design, journalism, broadcast news, public relations, and media law. I was responsible for the entire department, from budgeting to creating and implementing strategies and, ultimately crisis communications.

When I began the job, I carefully set out to define my position. I discovered a definition that truly illustrates the function of public relations:

“Public Relations is the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the people on whom its success or failure depends.”

Public relations is a dynamic, challenging, and rewarding profession. How did I get so lucky to happen upon a career that allows me to communicate in a variety of mediums to a variety of people daily? I love the challenge of working with reporters, developing strategies, and honing my public speaking skills.

One result of the redefinition of my position is that I’m part of the management team – which is essential to truly managing public relations. This is often not the case with many public relations professionals, who must prove their value to an organization. Of course, the rewards are always ten fold and it’s not surprising that the field of public relations is finally getting its due acknowledgment from the business world.

I have been incredibly blessed with a manager and board of directors who have been consistently supportive of my position, goals and objectives.

Doing the Right Things Right
One of the challenges for any public relations professional is communicating effectively through the media. Reporters usually need a 12-20 second sound bite, for example. I work to make their job easier by simply crafting that sound bite for them. Doing this correctly can dramatically increase a message’s effectiveness since there is no cutting and splicing of my interviews, thus reducing opportunity for them to be reported out of context.

Interviewing with the media is not as simple as it looks. It’s not about just answering questions or putting your business in the best light. I have been trained to not just answer questions, but to bridge the answer with the message I want to impart — all in less than 20 seconds. This technique is the single most important tool I have learned in my career thus far.

I really enjoy communicating, especially when I’m speaking to a large audience. I love it when the audience gets inspired about my subject! I can see their enthusiasm in their body language and read it in the expressions on their faces. Even mosquitoes can be interesting if delivered in an interesting and entertaining way.

My enthusiasm for our subject often gives people the wrong impression though. They think that I have a degree in biology and they always remark, “You must just love mosquitoes!” I don’t, but it’s easy to understand their misconceptions. After all, I used to carry mosquitoes and stuffed rats around in my car as visuals for my vector speech!

My goal is for our residents to understand the valuable and unique contributions that the District is making to their quality of life. Our employees are wonderfully dedicated and our workplace is caught up in a culture of excellence. We have such dedicated employees that sometimes we must demand they take vacations!

Our newly remodeled office is state of the art with an extensive lab and one-of-a-kind greenhouse where our fish biologist raises a million fish a year for mosquito control.

Working and Sharing Across the State
I’ve had the wonderful experience of working with other public relations professionals in mosquito and vector control across the state within the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California. The association is comprised of 58 separate mosquito and vector control agencies.

I’m currently the chair of the association’s statewide Public Relations Committee and past founder and chair of the Crisis Communication Committee. Only about 16 of the 58 districts have a position for a public relations professional.

As a committee, we work to provide resources for smaller districts by sharing with them everything we know and do, and work to provide training with regards to public relations and community outreach on a local and statewide basis. Last year, for example, we worked personally with television personality Lindsay Wagner of “Bionic Woman” fame at her home to create our statewide public service announcement.

I’ve also had the opportunity to organize and extend media training for managers and employees across the state. We may be experts in mosquito control, but that doesn’t automatically make us experts at communicating about mosquito control. That’s where the training comes in. It’s a good lesson for any business.

West Nile Response
I completed the reorganization of my department in time for the outbreak several years ago of West Nile Virus in the United States. Last year, the disease was centralized in southern California with over 830 people diagnosed with the disease and eight fatalities. This year, as predicted, the epicenter of the disease is in northern California.

To date, Contra Costa County alone has recorded eight human cases, and scores of birds, squirrels, horses, and mosquitoes that have tested positive for the disease. The disease is especially devastating to horses. About 50 percent of those horses diagnosed with the disease die. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for horses.

The arrival of West Nile virus has been an exhilarating challenge for me, providing the excitement, variety, and challenge I had hoped for in my career. In August, for example, I experienced a media frenzy! I spent a few 16 hour days on location with spray trucks and reporters, conducting as many as 40 interviews a day.

I worked closely with reporters who sometimes called me for a last minute update five minutes prior to their top story on the 11 o’clock news. I’ve also had the pleasure of being interviewed in all of the major news studios and have been a guest on Mornings on 2, Bay Area People, and more.

We continue to wage war against the mosquitoes that transmit West Nile Virus, utilizing our integrated pest management program. As a means of biological control, the District raises about a million mosquito-eating fish a year.

Western mosquitofish as they are commonly called, or Gambusia affinis, are a type of guppy that can thrive in somewhat polluted water and endure temperatures up to 100°. They reproduce in great abundance and are capable of eating up to 500 mosquito larvae each and every day. Our trained and certified technicians put these fish into various waterways and they are free to residents with ornamental ponds or horse troughs.

Our communication strategy has proven successful. We have won multiple awards for our video and newspaper inserts. Our strategy itself garnered us a Compass Award from the Public Relations Society of America’s Oakland-East Bay chapter in the Integrated Communications category. We worked to change the behavior, knowledge, and awareness of our constituents and were able to prove our strategies worked.

Most residents now know that the number one source of mosquitoes come from residential properties. They understand that mosquitoes can grow in anything from a neglected swimming pool to a soda can. They understand the importance of being aware of the conditions on their property and removing the habitats that give mosquitoes a place to grow.

My education at Cal State, Hayward prepared me perfectly for my West Nile virus challenge. I fervently wish the West Nile Virus outbreak had never occurred, but it has and it’s here to stay. Our work has always been important, but now it has taken on a front-page headline-news urgency. I feel privileged that my career allows me to make a difference in our community and to illustrate just how important the District is to all of us.