On July 20th, Bobbi D. Bagley, Director of Public Health for the City of Nashua, addressed the Rotary Club of Nashua regarding the Status of COVID in Nashua
- Bobbi started her career in public health in 1997 at the City of Nashua Community Health Dept. where she managed several public health programs: HIV/STD prevention; Maternal and Child Health; Lead Poisoning Prevention and Tuberculosis Control and Prevention.
- Bobbi joined the City after providing seven years of academic leadership at Rivier University as the first director of the Rivier University’s Public Health Programs in 2014. She developed the curricula for the undergraduate and graduate programs.
- Bobbi gained experience in a non-profit program development and management while working for the NH Minority Health Coalition from 2000-2005.
- Bobbi reviewed the role of Public Health: The science of protecting and improving the health of the community through education. The promotion of healthy lifestyles and research for disease and injury prevention.
- To convene the right group of stakeholders to set a vision for health, assess status and agree on a strategy for change; lead implementation and track improvement.
- What they do: Provide a range of direct services, engage partners on strategic initiatives and to ensure the health and well being of every member of the community. The DPHC serves Nashua and 12 surrounding towns totaling 208,000 community members.
- The 3 major areas of focus for the department included the opioid crisis and suicide prevention. As you might expect, COVID19 has commanded a lion share of attention.
- There has been a spike in both opioid cases and suicides and the shuttering of services during the pandemic created challenges in getting treatment to individuals who need it most.
- There is support namely through tele-health and this practice will be available after the pandemic in order to provide ongoing and timely services to those in need.
- Bobbi gave a robust update on COVID 19 stats for the city as well as measures being employed to reduce the number of infections.
- In Bobbi’s presentation, she cited a useful Data Dashboard tool that will provide specific information on infection rates, demographics, fatalities and infection and recovery rates.
- The dashboard information is updated every Sunday and as of Monday’s meeting, there were 18 new positive cases. They are seeing an increase in the infection rate among people ages 20-30 years of age.
- We learned about a 10 year old who contracted COVID and was transferred to MA General hospital. The child was in ICU for 15 days.
- As much as we learn daily, there are still several unknown factors regarding the virus such as long-term health impact. Data is being collected in the hope more can be gleaned to optimize health outcomes.
- Bobbi’s presentation was distributed to the club members electronically.