Public health focuses on promoting healthy behaviors and protecting the well-being of people and the communities where they live, work, and play. While healthcare providers primarily focus on a single individual's condition, public health professionals focus on the overall health of the community and implement programs to equitably ensure all individuals can live long and healthy lives.

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EQUALITY means each group or individual is given the same resource; however, EQUITY recognizes that each person or group lives with different circumstances and thus requires different amounts of resources to ensure everyone obtains the same outcome.

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For this reason, the New Bedford Health Department supports equitable health initiatives to ensure our diverse community receives the appropriate resources and allows for greater health equity for all. These initiatives focus on addressing things like poverty, discrimination, education, and employment, and include:

• Community outreach in multiple languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Creole)

• Data analysis to identify disparities

• Advancing Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce

• Health equity advocacy and policy development

 

Community Health & Wellness Promotion initiatives strive to promote healthy behaviors and prevent disease through public health nursing, community health outreach & engagement, communicable disease control, and preventative and supportive services. Activities include:

• Blood pressure screening
• Car seat safety services
• Health and Oral Wellness in Schools program
• Health and wellness education
• Health insurance enrollment
• Infectious disease surveillance
• Resource navigation (connections to additional services)
• Seasonal vaccines
    • In-home appointments available for homebound residents
• Sharps disposal containers (based on availability)
• Trainings:
    • CPR, AED, First Aid
    • Stop the Bleed
    • Safe Sitter
• Tuberculosis Skin Testing

Substance Use and Injury Prevention programs support substance use prevention, harm reduction, connections to care, and recovery efforts, as well as equitable approaches to public safety. Activities include:
• Youth Mental Health First Aid trainings and other prevention programming
• Education and safety measures around opioids and other drugs associated with overdoses: naloxone
administration training and distribution as well as fentanyl and xylazine test strip distribution
• Coordination of the Greater New Bedford Opioid Task Force
• Tobacco inspection and compliance

The Environmental Health and Food Protection Division focuses on protecting residents & visitors
from environmental threats. These activities include:
• Minimum housing standards (code enforcement)
• Lead paint determination
• Food protection (permitting and inspecting restaurants, food retailers, kitchens, and foodtrucks)
• Permitting temporary events
• Community sanitation to include trash and nuisance complaints, rodent control
• Inspectional jurisdiction to include wells, septic systems, pools, recreational camps, body art, tanning facilities,
garbage hauling, and septagehauling

The New Bedford Health Department Microbiology Laboratory is the only municipally-owned, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Certified commercial lab. The scope of services include:
• Biological monitoring & testing of the region’s many beaches
• Bacteriological testing for environmental impact studies
• Bacterial testing for private well and public drinking water systems
• Bacterial testing of Buttonwood Park Zoo’s habitats
• FDA testing for commercial shellfish holding tanks

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