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Date: 2/9/2022
SOUTHWICK – The Board of Health will soon receive grant funds from the state Department of Public Health for the purpose of hiring two public health nurses to serve six communities.
The $189,000 grant will fund the regional public health nurse program for Southwick, Blandford, Granville, Montgomery, Russell and Tolland. Most of the funds will be used to pay for a full-time and a part-time public health nurse.
Southwick’s interim Health Director Tom Fitzgerald said last week that about $10,000 from the grant has specifically been carved out for COVID-19 relief efforts, including contact tracing and purchasing of any materials for the town’s COVID response.
Fitzgerald said that the grant contract was signed by the town and has been sent back to the DPH for its signatures.
“We anticipate within two weeks that they will turn that around and have the first installment of money,” said Fitzgerald.
He said that he may ask former Health Director Tammy Spencer to attend a meeting in the near future to go over some of the details of the grant, as she had designed much of it before leaving Southwick for the health director’s position in East Longmeadow.
The two nurses will each cover different communities among the six towns, and Fitzgerald said that one can always cover the other communities if one of the nurses cannot work.