Brady Woodbury is one of the behind-the-scenes faces of the growing national effort to battle the spread of the coronavirus.

His name may be familiar to Tribune readers, as he has been quoted frequently in recent weeks in his role as Asotin County Public Health administrator.

It’s a position he has grown into and has included public health emergency preparedness training — skills being used to their fullest during the worldwide pandemic.

Craig Clohessy: Briefly, if you would, share your background in public health.

Brady Woodbury: I started in public health working as a tobacco prevention, tobacco education coordinator in eastern Idaho at Pocatello. ... Some of it was with minor league baseball teams, trying to prevent chewing tobacco use.

After that I went back to school to get my master’s degree in public health. When I finished that I got hired to work in Lewiston at North Central Health District, now it’s Public Health — Idaho North Central District. ... In 2011, I moved over to Asotin County and I’ve been here ever since.

CC: Part of your training has been in public health preparedness. What is that?

BW: In response to the World Trade Center bombing and some subsequent anthrax attacks in the mail system, back in 2001, most local health jurisdictions were funded to create a public health emergency preparedness program. It was basically to be prepared for any type of emergency from anthrax, biological, to outbreaks. In 2009, we had H1N1 influenza that we responded to and that was kind of a good trial run for COVID-19.

CC: It sounds like that training and that background has been good preparation for what public health is dealing with in regards to COVID-19.

BW: Yeah, there were a lot of similarities, a lot of differences, but the purpose and goal of public health preparedness is basically all hazards.

CC: Are the different health departments, regardless of state, working together?

BW: We do work together and communicate with each other, but we have very limited staff and so many duties that everyone’s working on. It’s sometimes hard to do the outreach we probably should do or would need to do to be as robust and responsive as we would want to be. But we do a good job for what we have.

CC: With COVID-19, how well do you think the health care industry and public health is responding?

BW: I think we’re responding really well. We’re seeing some shortages of things and right now, in public health, we wish we could test more. We wish we could get a better snapshot of what is going on out there.

The reality is that is why the governor and health officers have issued their proclamations and directives because the best way we can stop this COVID is social distancing. Keep ill people away from people who are not ill. If you’re sick, you’ve gotta stay home. We have to emphasize that, you can’t come to work if you’re sick.

We have to maintain social distancing because not everyone who is sick with COVID-19 has symptoms. There are a lot of younger people who have it and don’t know it and will probably never know they had it and they can easily spread it to people who are very vulnerable to it.

CC: How is the public responding? Are they understanding the seriousness of the situation?

BW: I think the public is coming around to that. It was hard to get that message out at first because people were comparing the numbers to the flu. The flu kills a lot of people every year and a lot of people get infected every year, but we haven’t looked at that with the same regard that we’re looking at COVID-19.

I think COVID-19 is a little more infectious, there’s a little bit higher mortality rate associated with it and so it’s a little more dangerous. We don’t know the exact levels of that, but we know it is more dangerous in some ways than the flu.

I think people are starting to realize how bad it can be. Especially when it gets to someone who has underlying health conditions and advanced age, 60 or more, they are at a much, much greater risk.

I’ve seen people taking it in stride and trying to do their part as a community member to slow the spread of this. The term is to “flatten the curve,” to reduce the epidemiological curve so we don’t have such a serious outbreak.

CC: Anything else you’d like to add?

BW: Wash your hands. Washing your hands is way more effective than using hand sanitizer. We aren’t running short of supplies of water and soap like we are hand sanitizer and it works better.

Clohessy is managing editor of the Lewiston Tribune. He may be contacted at cclohessy@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2251.

Brady Woodbury

Age: 46

Title/occupation: Administrator, Asotin County Public Health.

Family: Spouse, six children, two grandchildren and two Olde English Bulldogges.

Education: Master’s degree in public health.

Work history: Nine years administrator, Asotin County Public Health; seven years emergency preparedness program manager at Public Health — Idaho North Central District; two years tobacco prevention coordinator, Pocatello.

Hobbies/interests: Mountain biking, hiking (especially in the Tetons and Zion National Park) and high school sports official.

Do you have any hidden talents, or is there anything else that might surprise people about you?: Eagle Scout; 2003 Intercollegiate National Racquetball Champion, Mixed Doubles; 1999 Intramural Badminton Champion at Idaho State University.