I have spent more than 25 years working in local public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Officer Association (MHOA), where I oversee an organization with 600+ members, including staff from 300 of the 351 health departments in the state. For much of this time, I have advocated, with my
Read more
I relish any opportunity to apply knowledge gained throughout my studies in public health to resolve a real-world conundrum. When I learned that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading rapidly within our country and that it could overwhelm our health systems, I admittedly became obsessed. I read every pre-print that came out, whipped up my own spreadsheets to track the numbers, and cheered
Read more
Our homework assignments at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) lost importance in late March: COVID-19 was spreading, and people were unnecessarily dying. With so much of the focus on medical care rather than upstream, public health interventions, we knew there was work to be done. In early April, we learned that the newly formed Academic Public Health
Read more
Over the summer, JPHMP Direct’s “Boots on the Ground,” will be running a series, “Answering the Call: A Public Health Response to COVID-19,” featuring posts from the Academic Public Health Volunteer Corps in Massachusetts. Today’s feature provides background information on the Corps. In April 2019, eight schools and programs of public health in Massachusetts came together with the Massachusetts Department
Read more