Brandie Combs’ career with the Oklahoma State Department of Health was stressed to the max when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020.
“The pandemic, from a public health perspective, outweighs everything I’ve experienced,” she said. “We started talking about it in 2019 as we watched what was happening in other states and overseas. We started asking ourselves ‘what’s it going to look like in rural Oklahoma communities.’”
The difference between expectations and the reality of COVID-19 was unimaginable as the agency devoted the bulk of its resources to fighting the virus for more than two years.
“We did presentations in our 10 rural county area, and we thought we had planned for it,” Combs said. “But I never ever thought the pandemic was going to be as impactful as it has been. We didn’t know for sure what was going to happen. We were learning something, if not every day, for sure every week.”
Combs, who lives with her husband Monte and two teenage children in Blair, started working for the health department in 1994 as a part-time clerical employee in Clinton. She continued her work with the agency as she earned her associate degree from Western Oklahoma State College, her bachelor’s degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and her master’s from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
Now, Combs is the director of the state health department’s Region 5, which comprises 10 southwestern Oklahoma counties.
During her public health career, Combs had dealt with several serious health issues, but all of that work never prepared her or anyone else at the agency for what lied ahead with COVID-19.
“Never did I think we would shut down businesses and schools,” she said. “All of this has given me a greater appreciation for public health and what we do for our communities. What we’ve experienced should have humbled us to understand that a communicable disease can cripple a community, state or nation.”
Asking people to put a mask on their face or quarantine children from school was difficult for Combs and health department employees because there wasn’t time for prior education about the virus.
“We had dealt with issues like the need for seat belts and the dangers of smoking, but there had been time for research and public education which has been ongoing for years,” she said. “We didn’t have the luxury of time to educate (the public) about this communicable disease. With COVID, we didn’t have the knowledge to know what it was like we did with smoking and seat belts. We had never seen it before.”
Dealing with the public and trying to educate one person at a time proved stressful for Combs and the agency employees.
“Those were some of the most trying and emotional conversations,” she said. “Our staff got it handed to them a lot by residents who were upset with the guidelines, but it (masks and quarantine) was the only public health strategy available to us.”
As COVID-19 heads into the endemic, Combs is hopeful the two-year experience with the virus and its variants will lead the public to realize that “individual behavior affects the rest of the community.”
She’s also hopeful that public health agencies will have a plan to medicate or vaccinate the public should COVID-19 or a different disease rear its ugly head again.
During her career, Combs spent one year away from the state Health Department as executive director of the Lawton Community Health Center. She returned to the state agency in 2012.
Her public health work has garnered her awards including a Distinguished Alumni honor from the Hudson College of Public Health at OU. She also has been selected as a Friend of the Frontier at Fort Sill and as an Honorary Commander at Altus Air Force Base.
Aside from her career, Combs serves as a Blair Board of Education member, works with the Blair Community Foundation and is a member of the First Baptist Church of Blair. As a mom, she attends rodeo competitions her son Brandt, 18, competes in, and then makes Blair High School basketball games and FFA showings where daughter Blakleigh, 17, is participating.