Dedham Health Dept. Recognizes National Public Health Week

Press release from the Town of Dedham:

DEDHAM, MA - The Dedham Health Department is celebrating National Public Health Week, a national awareness week led by the American Public Health Association.

This year’s campaign, “Public Health is Where You Are,” highlights existing public health partners across the country while providing information and data about where gaps exist and how people can work together to fill them. The APHA has designated a daily theme for this week to highlight the work done by local health department partners.

Today’s theme is “Racism: A Public Health Crisi.s” The Dedham Health Dept. team focuses all their efforts on ensuring all members of this community, including businesses and organizations, have safe, equitable access to information that increases overall wellness and quality of life.

Earlier this year, the Dedham Organization for Substance Awareness (DOSA) convened a health equity working group to examine local data in order to identify substance use and mental health-related disparities. Additionally, the coalition partnered with Needham, Walpole, and Westwood as part of a grant from the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health, called the Massachusetts Collaborative for Action, Leadership, and Learning 3 (MassCALL3) Substance Misuse Prevention Grant Program. This grant program is set up to assist communities in preventing and/or reducing use and misuse of substances of first use (e.g., alcohol, nicotine, cannabis) among youth with a focus on health equity.

DOSA and partners set a goal to establish equitable prevention practices and policies as the foundation of its regional strategic prevention plan, and to engage residents and key stakeholders from historically underrepresented groups in the process. Through continued outreach and education initiatives designed to reach all members of the community, the Dedham Health Department and DOSA work to connect people with resources that will empower them to live healthy lives.

Visit www.dedhamcoalition.org to learn more about DOSA and their impact here in Dedham, and visit www.dedham-ma.gov/departments/health to learn more about your local Health Department, connect with staff, and to sign up for email updates and notifications.

For more information about this week, please visit www.nphw.org.

About National Public Health Week

During the first full week of April each year, APHA brings together communities across the United States to observe National Public Health Week as a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our nation. For more than 20 years, APHA has served as the organizer of NPHW. Every year, the Association develops a national campaign to educate the public, policymakers and practitioners about issues related to each year's theme. We host events and enlist partners in the nationwide celebration. The 2022 NPHW theme is "Public Health is Where You Are."

This press release was produced by the Town of Dedham. The views expressed here are the author’s own.