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Date: 7/5/2023
LUDLOW — The Board of Health named Paulina Matusik as its next public health director at its June 27 meeting.
Matusik has been serving as the interim public health director for approximately the last seven months.
Board of Health Chair Kelly Lamas said the board was presented with three candidates for the position after first interviewing with Town Administrator Marc Strange and Human Resources Director Carrie Ribeiro.
Only Matusik was interviewed on June 27 as one applicant withdrew their application and the other had a prior commitment.
The Board of Health read over the third applicant’s resume and took it into consideration before eventually naming Matusik as their choice.
When asked if she was ready to be named the next director, Matusik said, “If you asked me this question seven months ago, I probably would have said I have no idea but doing this for the last seven months, I love this position and I feel like I keep growing as person doing it. I feel now where I am at, I feel comfortable that I can continue doing what I have been doing the last even months and feel I can do an even better job.”
The Board of Health agreed that they liked Matusik’s resume, interview and working with her over the past several months.
“I think my wide range of education, past experience and then current experience make me a great candidate for the position. I think that a director of public health needs to know more than just one avenue of the job. I think they need to know all aspects and I think my education and past education and masters help me look at all avenues,” Matusik added.
The duties of the health director position include answering directly to the Board of Health. All other Health Department staff will answer to the health director.
Before being named the interim public health director, Matusik was the public health coordinator for Ludlow and said the transition between those two positions was easy.
She added, “I feel like the public health program coordinator and the director, that portion was kind of an easy shift to me. The personnel avenue, I met with all staff to kind of establish this is what is happening and try to establish open communication within the department. I would still love to work together as best as I can to help the department and the community. In order for the Health Department to work best is to bring that open communication with all employees.”
Some goals that Matusik said she has is working on policies and procedures and working on a community need assessment.
“Working more on policies and procedures for staff so they know what is required of them and what is required of the Health Department to keep things more structured. Another one is doing the community needs assessment to get the input of the community, what are the needs to the community based on what the Health Department is already doing or what they could do better,” she said.
Matusik said she would like to have the community needs assessment ready to be distributed by the beginning of August.
The Health Department is currently made up of Health Inspector Tim Fontaine, Public Health Nurse Angela Kramer, Office Assistant Anita Goncalves and a recently hired summer student intern Fatma Tufa.
Matusik thinks the current structure of the department is working well.
She said, “I think currently, with the student intern included, I think things are going pretty good. I think there is great communication within the department. Anita has been a great asset to both Tim and Angela and the student intern has kind of helped take on those roles from the past position, from the public health program coordinator so more of those education pieces that I would bring out to the community. With the set staff that we have right now, us working together and communicating I think we are doing a great job as a team.”
Matusik said she wanted to pursue public health because of how broad it is leaving the door open to help multiple people.
“I felt like public health was kind of all encompassing and you can either focus on one direct avenue such as health inspections, or environment, or disease or you can make is as broad as you wanted which is what brought me to public health. Being able to help multiple people instead of one individual person at a time is what got me into public health,” Matusik added.
Matusik also said she is a resident of Ludlow and being able to work for the town is a dream scenario for her.