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Date: 2/1/2023
SOUTHWICK — Public health nurses based in Southwick are starting to schedule office hours in the communities covered by a regional public health nurse grant from the state.
Two public health nurses were hired through a grant that regionalizes the public health capabilities in Blandford, Granville, Montgomery, Russell, Southwick and Tolland. The grant and regionalization was largely organized by Southwick’s Board of Health.
Starting Feb. 2, nurses Tricia Sedelow and Christine Southworth will host regular office hours in each of the communities in the agreement, where residents can receive blood pressure checks, health education and to have health questions or concerns addressed. No appointments are needed during these office hours.
Sedelow, the full-time nurse, will be in Tolland’s Town Hall during office hours on Mondays, and in Southwick on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She will spend an hour on most Thursdays in Granville, at Town Hall on the first and third Thursday, and the Granville Public Library on the second Thursday.
Southworth, the part-time nurse, will be at Blandford’s Health Department on the first and third Monday and second and fourth Friday of every month, 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. She will also be in Montgomery’s Town Hall on Tuesdays, and Russell’s on Thursdays during normal office hours.
Sedelow said that both nurses investigate any kind of communicable diseases that are reported to them in these communities, including foodborne illnesses like E. coli and salmonella, or airborne diseases like mumps.
Before her current post, Sedelow said she had a similar role in an eight-town region in Connecticut. She had to stop when her entire family contracted COVID-19.
COVID-19 and the flu are a public health concern, but Sedelow said that they typically do not track cases of either disease, in part due to how prevalent both already are, and in the case of COVID-19 because of how testing is now conducted. With at-home tests now the most common way to test for the disease, keeping track of data from laboratory tests is pointless because it only shows a fraction of potential cases, Sedelow said.
“They put [take-home tests] in the main entry of Southwick’s Town Hall, and people have been taking them,” said Sedelow.
Generally, she said, infection rates of respiratory diseases are slowing down somewhat from the post-holiday spikes other health agencies reported.
“It does seem to be slowing down a little. We always will have a spike around the holidays and Thanksgiving, especially with the flu and people have their masks off,” said Sedelow.