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hello everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all all right so welcome to the January Board of Health meeting
for city of Riv I'm Dr Drew bunker chairperson and with me tonight is Kathleen Savage board member to my left and Vivia vivana katano board member to my right also is Lauren Buck who's director of Public Health Michael Wells who's Health agent and director of inspectional services and Paula Su who's the Board of Health Board of Health clerk first thing we're going to do is
review and approve the minutes from our last meeting which is actually October 24th um 2024 so ask the other board member members to approve those minutes I approve the minutes I approve of the minutes great thank you next is going to be the public health communicable monthly report with Lauren Buck thanks Dr bunker um okay uh so our monthly report is for actually two two months worth of data um
so you'll see that our influenza number uh from October 24th 2024 to yesterday was 307 so that's you know quite a quite a few a very large number but it does reflect more than just one month of of data um and it is respiratory illness season so we were you know expect to see higher numbers our coronav virus number is 118 confirmed and 33 probable we did have one empo case in our um city over the last two months um and then finally
our Public Health updates over the last few months national news has been reporting regularly on the current Aven flu which is called h5n1 while the current RIS of the public remains quite low the CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposure the current avien flu is common in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and US dairy cows as a reminder reveres Urban a agriculture ordinance does allow for small backyard flocks of chickens to be
kept with an up-to-date license from the Board of Health anyone with chickens or poultry in their yards needs to take appropriate precautions to reduce the risk of transmission of the avien flu from mild birds so please reach out to the Board of Health at 78148 5 8486 if you have any further questions or if you aware of any backyard chickens in your neighborhood thanks great thank you next is the inspectional services monthly report with Michael Wells thanks Dr bunker
inspectional Services report for the month of January on the interior housing division We performed uh Certificate of Fitness we issued 46 Certificate of Fitness reinspection 13 interior complaints 21 and interior complaint reinspection we had two on the food Inspection Division uh rout number of routine inspections was 27 number of reinspection was seven number of complaint inspections was three and one pre-opening inspection on the exteror
sanitation division um violations issued accumulation of litter trash garbage and debris 22 carts outed improper times three commercial vehicles in residential neighborhoods one overflowing dumpsters 29 improper placement of garbage trash and bulky items 186 uh and improper storage of garbage and trash was eight junks he heaps and automobile graveyards one and multiple
unregistered vehicles on the property was one and snow ice and some pump violations is 34 I like to just take a second to um speak about snow ice and some pumps we're obviously in that season um where snow is upon us and it is up to the uh residents and business owners to clear their sidewalks on the front and side of their properties um to at least create um space for a stroller or wheelchair to get by on their property um also some pumps um please
ensure that they're not discharging onto city sidewalks in streets causing ice buildup and a nuisance thank you great thank you Michael next is going to be the mapc presentation uh I'll ask our representative to come up oh yes in rier TV do you mind putting up the uh presentation the slideshow
thank you good thank you uh good evening and want to say my thanks to the to the board for the chance to be on your agenda this evening I really appreciate it uh my name is Barry keer I'm the director of the public health department at the metropolitan area planning Council um but also in that role I am part of the team that supports the north Suk Public Health collaborative and that's what brings me here this evening um I'll provide a little bit of a of a background on the north suffk public
health collaborative how it involves rever um then talk a little bit about some of the work that's coming out of the group that's happening um but then also talk a little bit about some proposed changes that essentially would involve the board and so that's a big reason of why I'm here this evening too um and also just want to give my appreciation to your public health director Health and Human s director uh Lauren Buck who's been really a big a big part of the work there and really helped with a lot of this um so the north suff public health collaborative you can go to the next slide if you want to thank the noric public health
collaborative uh was formed in 2016 and it formed when an intermunicipal agreement or an IMA was signed between the city of Rivier the city of Chelsea and the town of Winthrop um just really highlight two main reasons for the formation of the north cic public health collaborative um Chelsea Riv W up Riv among it um is a place where essentially kind of residents experience a higher amount of chronic disease and other kind of places uh than in Massachusetts too
and so as a way of thinking about how to address and look for opportunity to improve essentially kind of Wellness well-being and essentially kind of reduce those risks of people essentially having kind of worse uh conditions or more illness in their lives the collaborative was formed the other part of it too is that we're at a part in time in Massachusetts where that ability to kind of demonstrate kind of a larger population of impact to do things collaboratively um is really being incentivized and so it was an opportunity for the three municipalities to work together um when they came
together the the the collaborative has a board that's formed by the three Executives of each of the municipalities so in the case of r that would be the mayor who would serve on the board there um but what it's allowed us to do is actually sorry I'll have to go to the next slide um I go one more slide um and then what that's essentially allowed the formation of the collaborative to do is to essentially be able to kind of bring shared staff to rever that also works with Chelsea and with Winthrop um and that's really recognizing their
additional capabilities in terms of like skills knowledge based expertise in the public health field that can be valuable to local public health departments but it can be really a burden at the municipal level if everybody has to hire that position so there's a way to kind of efficiently do that by hiring positions in a shared manner um and what that's resulted in in um for reviewing the north cic public health collaborative is capabilities from MPC on the public health side and then even more specifically there's now a shared Public Health ner that works across the
and there's also a shared Regional epidemiologist and in both those roles they're kind of doing additional support around communicable disease uh ways essentially to kind of increase the ability to vaccinations there's been an incredible effort around childhood vaccination that was really kind of spurred by and in rever so really to make sure people were in a place that they could be protected and grow up healthy um and then even more so essentially to do that work really to think about what's the evidence what the changes to create more healthy environments um so I'll pause there just for a moment just to see if there's any
other background or clarifications I can talk about the collaborative I'm going to talk a little bit more about what's coming up but just wanted to pause and see if there's any background that would be helpful for the board all right I'll go uh one more slide um and just really want to highlight really again some of the things that this work has contributed to I spoke a little bit about kind of the Staffing and the service level um what I would add here is that now and we're kind of in our third cycle of this of being able to do a community health assessment and Improvement plan for R
and that's being done essentially at and through the city level often this is something that might be done only by a hospital and I think as you can imagine sometimes the priorities don't always reflect what a particular Community holds and so in this particular case it's being done essentially through R cheli and Winthrop uh one of the things that by having the collaborative it actually positioned the city very early on in the pandemic to be able to benefit from state and federal resources that were flowing down and that's because the three municipalities were working together so they became a really great
place to direct that funding and that's not any way to talk about or suggest that essentially the municipality didn't make significant Investments as well in that response but we're able to kind of bring State funding as well too as that and then as I mentioned again too there's kind of expertise we can turn to as as Lauren was talking about with the AVM flu as we kind of look and learn that research we have somebody like our epidemiologist we can turn to directly to be able to supplement that information that can be helpful at a local level going to go one more slide um so the the changes that are in front
of us now for the collaborative much of it results to a funding stream we're receiving from the state from a program called the public health Excellence fund and this is essentially trying to make sure that every city and town Public Health Department is meeting essentially the kind of state statutes around Public Health protections and services um but also essentially kind of doing it in a way that essentially kind of brings in and involves Boards of health so the IMA that I mentioned earlier is going to be revised and that'll go through each City and town for review and approval before
anything is signed but the one change that is essentially in there is Board of Health involvement and right now there isn't necessarily A Board of Health member on that and we'll be looking to offer essentially that representation on the board as part of it um what we're also doing at the moment too and again really have to appreciate the the time that your public health staff including Mike have have provided to this um essentially showing that there is compliance with the public health laws um there is the first time in the last couple years where the state actually put all that in one place and you would
be probably not surprised to know the number of statutes and regulations that are meant to be met um some might be Antiquated but a lot essentially kind of still are in place and so we're working to do that um in addition there is actually a new state law that was PL that was passed that's essentially kind of setting standards for essentially kind of the credentials that public health staff should have if they're doing certain work um so you can imagine when you have people who are essentially doing things that are engineering or architectural related they often have to have a certain essentially kind of background or lure to that that same
type of change is coming down and it's being supported by training and other Investments but that's coming down too and then lastly as I mentioned there'll be uh 2025 Community Health assessment that'll be wrapping up in the near future um so I'm going to stop there and again check but just really wanted to check with you all in terms of that background but essentially get any thoughts and kind of increase your awareness around some of the changes that are expected to come down for the collaborative sorry so where do you guys get your funding from sure so so
initially when the collaborative was formed uh each of the municipalities made an investment in the collaborative at this point it's actually coming through the state Grant which is a public health Excellence Grant and so we have a there's something called a shared surface coordinator role to help organize and that's where the funding comes from now Barry can I ask a question just so can you explain more what you mean by Board of Health representation sure so um with essentially the public health Excellence fund there are with the grant
there are decisions that need to be made in terms of positions Investments budget over a year not probably unlike things that come before you now um but what the IMA will be updated to say is that a Board of Health member from Chelsea from River from winup will come together and help in that decision- making across the collaborative so we'd be asking for time of a board member maybe four times a year to be able to be part of those conversations in addition to any kind of Communications in between but that would essentially kind of constitute a public meeting where You' come come out and be
part of that decision- making for the collaborative sorry so you work directly with North suffk because North suffk in my mind is mental health um yeah so group but yeah thank you sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you yeah so there is the I'm again I'm I don't have the name correctly too but nor sopic mental health I know has a new has a new name now too and so really that's speaking to the geography of where that work is
happening and so then the north suic public health collaborative reflects that same geography but is essentially directly related to the local public health work in each of the municipalities so on the public health side yeah separ separate exactly yeah thanks for the chance to clarify all right so just just to to top it off there too thank you again for the the time tonight too and um probably through Lauren but maybe even through myself directly too we'll be following up with you to let you know about those
changes essentially as that's kind of moving along as any kind of final decisions are being made but as I mentioned probably following up to see if we can get representation from the board on essentially the the collaboratives board as well excellent thank you very much thank you so much thank you for time on your agenda I appreciate all right and then next is going to be the licensing renewals of body art um that's going to be Lauren take go ahead over so it's the time of year again when we do all of our body art uh
inspection um in inspections for the the renewal of their licenses There are 16 um license renewals that I'm going to run through I'll run through all of them they've all passed our inspection they all are getting recommended by myself and Mike to be approved by all of you so I'll just run through all of them and maybe we can do one big vote so we don't have to do all of them so um the first is uh Janet Aesthetics she's on 270
Broadway her inspection uh was uh in January um sorry I don't have the exact date for her inspection but she did pass um so she has two licenses For The Establishment and for her individual practitioner uh which is Janet is cuido Kia alabo micropigmentation is on 91 Hutchinson Street her inspection was on January 22nd and she passed she also has two licenses For The Establishment and for herself Kaa lisabo bab and bow Spa
on 475 Broadway their inspection was on January 21st they passed there's three licenses that we're asking to approve tonight first for the establishment of B and bow Spa then for two individual practitioners fun luong and Shelly Vu the next there's Lakshmi Beauty which is 100 Shirley avc1 um two licenses uh their inspection was December 12th 2024 they did pass so
the uh establishment license for laakshi beauty pass and Blanca eoto lennis which is the individual practitioner who practices there next Sarah aspino studio is on 510 Broadway her inspection was on uh January 16th for three licenses the establishment of Sarah aspino Studio the individual practitioner license of Sarah aspino and the individual practitioner license of Henry arazzo they all passed next is brow Comm M she's on 655 Beach
Street her inspection was on January 17th um for two licenses the establishment of Browse by Camila and the individual practitioner license of Maria Jimenez and they both passed and finally cat beautyco on 207 Square Road the inspection was on December 12th 2024 for two licenses for the establishment of cat Beauty Co and the individual practitioner license of Katherine pagero and they both passed so we're recommending all of those licens es um
be approved by the board yes I approve those licenses and ask the other board members I approve all s the licenses I approve of the licenses as well great those are three approvals excellent so now we'll just open up the meeting um to the public if anyone has anything to say um okay well that will conclude this uh month's Board of Health meeting thank you thank you