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Date: 12/9/2020
EAST LONGMEADOW – The Massachusetts Health Officers Association (MHOA) honored East Longmeadow Health Director Aimee Petrosky with the 2020 John D. Crowley Award.
The award is given annually to a regular member who contributes to the growth and success of the Association through outstanding leadership and extraordinary service. MHOA is an organization that services public health professionals through programs of education, technical assistance, representation and resource development.
“I was honestly shocked,” Petrosky responded. When she found out she was the recipient, Petrosky thought they called asking her for advice on who in Western Massachusetts might be a good candidate. She said she was giving other names of people who would be worthy of such an honor, not realizing right away that she had won the award.
“It was a real shock,” Petrosky explained. “The people who have won this in the past are real instrumental leaders in the field, so to even be nominated was something that was a significant honor and to receive it was even more so.”
The award is in honor of the late John D. Crowley who accomplished prominent service to MHOA as a founder of the Metropolitan Health Officers Association and served as secretary for numerous years. He also served the city of Cambridge as executive health agent and was a member of the Health Department for more than 50 years.
Awards Committee Chair Robin Chapell said, “Every year our Association likes to honor outstanding members in our field. People who we feel really make a difference in the work they do and also in helping our Association grow so we can help other colleagues in our field.”
Chapell continued, “We ask our members to nominate their peers in different categories and then we ask recent past winners of that award to vote on one of the nominees. We believe we have a lot of great caring people in public health. Health Director Aimee Petrosky is a rising star in the public health field and it was a pleasure awarding her this honor.”
Last year, Petrosky was asked to be a part of the Executive Committee, giving her the opportunity to advocate for members in Western Massachusetts and the needs they face receiving training and assistance to their communities.
“Serving on the Executive Committee is a great way to make sure that the Western Mass. needs are represented and heard because they’re different from those of Eastern Mass. – in terms of the size of our communities, the funding to our communities and the public health needs,”said Petrosky
Petrosky started at the Northampton Health Department in 2008, where she said she fell in love with public health. In November of 2015, Petrosky began her time as the director of public health for the town of East Longmeadow. Petrosky studied sociology and government at Smith College and is currently working on her master’s degree in public health at Bay Path University.
“One of the things that has pulled me back into local public health is you get to have your hands right in everything. Nothing is the same every day. In a pandemic even more so, but even on a normal day with public health the requirements and job are diverse,” Petrosky replied. “People think most of what we do is inspect restaurants, but we do restaurants, camps, pools, septic systems, housing and nuisance inspections. Then on top of the inspectional mandates there’s also policy creation, and public health outreach events; it’s so broad.”
Right now, Petrosky’s job is almost entirely structured around COVID-19 response and disease control.
She stated, “We have a pandemic that we’re trying to control and in order to do that it takes a lot of education and outreach to our residents, answering questions and working with people who have been exposed or currently COVID positive.”
Petrosky continued, “It’s really taking my knowledge of the best practices of disease control and prevention and helping a variety of different businesses and people institute ways to protect themselves, their staff and the people who use their facilities.”
Overall, Petrosky said East Longmeadow has a system that has allowed them to be as successful as they can in the pandemic. As she expressed, “One of the major things that we don’t have is public health nursing. During the pandemic, public health nursing is critical to controlling the spread of a virus like this. 2020 has been challenging and it has been hard, but I think it’s also showed a lot of successes for the town of East Longmeadow and many communities in Western Mass.”
The town of East Longmeadow is working to create a shared service partnership with the town of Longmeadow, which Petrosky explained she thinks, “Will greatly increase our capacity as a community and strengthen our ability to provide preventative health services to both communities. The town council will be hearing that in the next couple of weeks and hopefully we’ll be able to get an arrangement made.”