Doudelyne Cenafils

        The City of Worcester Public Health Department is efficient in working to protect and improve the lives of the residents of the community. From the beginning of this field experience, I became involved in developing several projects pertaining to the major issues of public health. These projects include creating PowerPoint presentations on three specific topics. The artifacts below are the presentations as follow:

      Public Health Presentation: Health of Worcester. This artifact was a broad picture of health to be shown to a Russian delegation that was visiting the health department. The purpose of this document was to provide the visitors with an idea of the role of the health department in the city. The report, in fact, provides information about the health of Worcester residents, including the community health status and factors influencing them. In order to generate this, I had to collect several staff’s work on each section and collate it to create one single document.

       Unused Prescription Drugs Safe Disposal. Following national programs for the prevention of substance abuse, the City of Worcester has been working substantially to reduce the demand for alcohol, illicit and non-illicit drugs use among its residents. Based on some acquired funding, the department planned to find a long-term disposal form for unused and expired prescriptions throughout the city. My task was to research all the possible plans in the country and create one that will best fit our city in long term. And so, this project was based on President Obama’s standpoint, who had signed the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010. This act permits community-based drug take-back programs to accept unused controlled prescription medications for safe disposal (McKnight, 2012). This law is helping reducing that risk by allowing individuals and long-term care facilities to relinquish the most dangerous prescription drugs to law enforcement officials and other authorized individuals for safe disposal (McKnight, 2012). Once the project was ready, I presented my findings to the city Commissioner, the department Director and other representatives. Later, I performed some additional research for the update of this PowerPoint, which is fond in the document Rx Drugs Disposal additional info.

        Health Disparities & Worcester Health Equity. This project involved working jointly with the Project Director of Common Pathways, which is a community coalition partnership, on developing racial and health equity for the city. With the assistance of the coalition’s intern, I researched current data for several determining factors including tobacco and opioids use, diabetes and other chronic diseases, HIV, Hepatitis C, family structure and disability and many others. These data were to help generate an article that addresses the factors that lead to the city’s poor health. As this project is still ongoing, the coalition continues to develop, implement, and evaluate community-based policy and systems change strategies that address social determinants of health and reduce racial and ethnic health inequities.

Reflections: