Partners for a Healthier Community

Michael J. Coughlin, MS
Director, Health & Human Services*

HEALTHY CITY FALL RIVER
WEB BLOG

This forum provides an opportunity to expand on and link the mission of Healthy City Fall River with other health and other fields that affect the well being of those who live and work in Fall River.

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After four years as the Health and Human Services Director, Michael J. Coughlin is stepping down to return to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where he will serve in the newly created position of local health preparedness manager.

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July 22, 2008

Dear Friends,

It has been my privilege to serve my adopted hometown of Fall River as Director of Health and Human Services for the past four years. But as many of you already know, I am moving on to something else.

On August 4, I will assume a newly-created position at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) in the Bureau of Emergency Preparedness. As the Local Health Manager I will be working with health departments around the state on their emergency planning as well as providing them with other technical assistance. In the coming years DPH will be looking to regionalize more public health services, and I will be very involved in that initiative.

I leave Fall River city government with mixed emotions. I am excited about my new opportunity but will miss the many people I have worked with so closely for the past four years. Through the collaboration between Partners for a Healthier Community and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Healthy City Fall River (HCFR) has built a permanent infrastructure to promote and maintain the health of the community through collaborative processes. For example, consider two signature programs closely identified with HCFR:

Wellness: Fall River has a high rate of smoking, obesity, poor diet, and sedentary lifestyles. As a result we have higher than average rates of heart disease and cancer. Last fall, working with HCFR and City grant writer Jane Dibiasi, we applied for, and received two major wellness grants from DPH.. These programs, which involve the tobacco control program and a new Healthy Lives wellness coordinator, will involve a number of community agencies in efforts to promote exercise, improved nutrition, and smoking cessation. One of the grants is specifically directed at municipal employees. In February 2008, HHS was awarded a $300,000 two-year grant from Tufts University to conduct a wellness intervention targeting Fall River Public School children in grades one through three.
Gang Reduction: HHS is heavily involved in two major gang reduction efforts – the state-funded Shannon program and the federally funded Weed and Seed Program, a community-based strategy sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice. In addition, we used Shannon funds to create a Youth outreach/street worker anti-violence effort that links kids at-risk of joining gangs with employment, training, and recreation opportunities to steer them away from gang involvement. Public safety and gang reduction through youth development are among the major priority areas in the Healthy City Action Plan. Many HCFR community partners have been involved in the development of this initiative.

Over the past four years we demonstrated that the local health department can be a valuable partner with the rest of the community in sponsoring initiatives to improve the quality of life in our city. One of my goals in my new position will be to encourage more cross-sector collaboration in other communities, as we have done here in Fall River.

Healthy City Fall River is a model for communities across Massachusetts and across the country that want to promote wellness, safety, and the other attributes of a healthy community. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved over the first five years of the initiative and will be excited to see where it leads in the next five years. I remain a Fall River resident and be will be as active as I can be in HCFR so I’m sure our paths will cross again.

Cheers!

Mike Coughlin

*Photo courtesy Fall River Herald News