Board of Health - Regular Meeting

[Music] Good evening and welcome to the September 8th, 2025 Grafton Board of Health meeting. As a preliminary matter, this is Jennifer Mayor, chair of the board of health. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons antip anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Andrew Chalupa. Andrew Chalupa. Bill Muller. Bill Muller here. Radika Prabu. Radika Prabu.

Staff and anticipated speakers on the agenda. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. See, McKenzie Walker. Mackenzie Walker here. Uh Annette Garcia. Annette Garcia here. Bridget Hurley. Bridget Hurley here. And just to acknowledge Connor Robashard has joined us today as well. Uh I'd like to open the meeting. May I have a motion to open the meeting?

Is there a second? This is Bill Muller. I second that. Roller I Bill Muller. I guess sorry.

Jen Maynard. This open meeting of the Grafton Board of Health is being conducted hybridly consistent with the act extending certain CO 19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. Governor Healey has further extended this act until June 30th, 2027 of the remote meeting provisions of former Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. In order to mitigate the transmission of the CO 19 virus, the act extends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted at the town's website at www.gfton-mass.gov, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. There are no public hearings scheduled for this evening's meeting. If the public has a question or comment on an agenda item, please utilize the Q&A feature in Zoom. Please include your full name and address when submitting a comment. And I'll just note there is nobody present with us in person other than those uh already indicated. For this meeting, Grafton Board of Health is convening, as we said, hybridly via Zoom and in person as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note this this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and to take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Any supporting materials that have been provided to members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless I note otherwise. Before return to the first item on the agenda, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I'll introduce any speakers on the agenda for a topic.

After they conclude their remarks, I'll invite the board members to provide any comment, questions, or motions. Please identify yourself by name when speaking. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate meeting minutes. For any response, please wait until I yield the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage with other members, please do so through me, taking care not to taking care to identify yourself. Finally, any votes and motions made during this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. That was a little shorter that time, maybe. Okay. Um so first on the agenda and you are welcome to stay after this but you don't have to. Uh we wanted to give Connor you a moment to introduce yourself and the work um you'll be doing with us. Uh welcome.

Hi N. Thank you so much and thanks for the Zoom option. Allows me to jump to another meeting after this. Perfect.

Uh I'm I'm Connor. Uh I'm the director of regional services at the Central Mass Regional Planning Commission. Uh my team at CMRPC works to bolster municipal services in a variety of ways and since the pandemic we've been especially focused on building and supporting local public health collaborives across central mass. So I'm here today today to help launch the uh the the central Massachusetts regional public health department uh and offer a quick refresher on the grant program that's funding a lot of this work. So um I'll just be I'll be real quick just a couple minutes. Sure. Um, so in addition to your local investment, this team supported by the public health excellence grant program. Uh, it's a statewide initiative to build stronger, more equitable local public health systems. Uh, the goal is to help towns like Grafton uh, expand access to essential public health services by sharing staff. Uh, so that includes the folks in the room with you uh, and and by collaborating closely with uh, your your partner towns Shrewsbury and West Boilston. Uh, so we're here to make sure you have the the capacity you need while tailoring services to your town specific needs and expectations. Uh, before I turn it over to uh back to you and and to Annette, I'd love to hear from uh the board for just a minute um to help better better understand uh what matters most here in Grafton. And so um just a couple questions uh and I'd love to get input from the board from your perspective. um what public health issues should be uh should we be sure not to to lose sight of uh here in Grafton? So I guess I'll just give a quick start of some of the things that um over the last couple of years uh we've really worked with the past alliance to kind of rebuild in a postcoavid or coexisting with COVID world here in in Grafton that I think um we feel is kind of important to try and continue um in supporting uh

folks in the community. So um the first being um we we do have some vaccine clinics that we've stood up um with nursing uh we were doing some blood pressure clinics uh as well as um during those clinics allowing people to fill out like the file for file for life form so they have that um certainly um I think those are things we'd like to continue as much of. Um we've had a lot of work around our ambulance and our ambulance response times and really identifying um different groups within our community that maybe they have some unmet needs in the community and we can help those communities not have to maybe utilize that service as much by putting services in place. So, I think having um you know, a clinician out in the field, getting to know people, working with those senior housing um has been a couple of the things that we've stood up over the last couple years that we'd like to continue forth um bill and a few others are on a subcommittee that we created for the uh opioid settlement dollars. Um and we've been really kind of moving some of those initiatives forward. So, that's certainly a priority to continue to advance access um for support services here in Grafton. Um what else? Did I leave anything out? Anything else? Or any other priorities I didn't identify?

No, that's fine. That's fine. That's great. U super helpful. Uh, and you mentioned a couple of these already, but any programs or populations that have have needed extra attention in recent years? I know you mentioned seniors. Uh, ambulance program, the the blood pressure clinics have been helpful. Anything else?

I think that's where primarily we've been focused. Um, we did have um sort of during the height of the the pandemic, we did support um some vaccine clinics at the schools as well. Um so certainly um you know there's um sometimes some hesitancy but also if there isn't we want to help people have access as much as possible um in the town. Um, so we've also been working on aside from the um ambulance committee um access to first aid and AED supplies um in our schools in particular, but also um things like the municipal build municipal buildings and places where lots of people congregate. Um we identified through a separate work stream that um everybody's sort of doing their own thing. So we're trying to figure out um how to be able to streamline that. you certainly there's certain groups like the um fire department and the police that have it down pretty well. Um but others are sort of uh on their own. So that is a priority because we do want to we do know that people have better outcomes if they have um you know early access to first aid and AED in an emergency situation. So that is something that we did a subcommittee on. We had to pause a little bit just given some of the things that we additionally had taken on. But um September, October, we're going to try and kick some of those discussions back off again. Um and I think our um our senior housing, maybe some of our group homes have identified an interest in partnering um with the board of health and the alliance to again sort of better understand the needs in the community so that people's unmet needs can be better met whether that's you know in collaboration with the senior center and the board of health but those so seniors and and I you know thank the school age children as well for that and then of course we do a lot with you all around um you know tobacco the tobacco laws and um I know that um some of that group was doing some education and stuff

I think in the schools as well around that. Perfect. Um you mentioned a couple uh local partners that um you know library, senior center, um housing, these all you know are immediately sort of obvious to us as we get started with these. Are there partners that we might not know about like nonprofits, um, faith groups, volunteer groups that, uh, might be important, uh, to the public health work going on here?

Um, yeah. So, we do, uh, work with the medical reserve corps and in here in Grafton. Um, uh, Maryanne in town is very engaged with that. Um, there is a, um, are they a nonprofit, the group that we're doing with the opioid? Um I think they are what are they called again? GAP Recovery. GAP Recovery is a a newly identified partner here in the community um that offers recovery services. Did you want to add to that?

Um they do uh we did a grant with them recently. I will say we've had um really good partnership on um the stuff with the ambulance committee and the uh first aid with the fire department. um they've been super responsive to um kind of help us understand what they're doing that maybe we could leverage police department as as well um you know just based on their availability for for doing things. Um so I do think we have um and they've also been involved on the opioid um subcommittee. So I think um you know some of the usual suspects they they actually work really well across um our different groups as well. Beautiful. Yeah.

And then um I just have one more u trying to understand maybe what's been helpful in terms of communicating to the public updates from the board. Um are there are there communication channels that have been really effective or or ways of messaging um that have gotten uh you know communication out there in an effective way?

Yeah. So we use um a variety of ways to communicate with the public. A lot of times it's through our website. Um we do have a social media platform. So depending upon um you know how quickly we want people to get information, we might use um social media to blast that out. Nancy in our office who's on the line as well um would be the key contact for all of those things. Um we have um is it onsolve? We also have the ability to send out alerts if there's something that we need to communicate to the community quickly um in addition to kind of what the broader state can do. Um that seems to be most people in town seem to know how to get in touch with the the board of health. um and Nancy is sort of their their first line of contact and then if there needs to be an inspection um we use this meeting to sort of um report off if you will to the public since it's recorded and then meeting minutes are generated and posted to our website. So we have all those sort of typical open meeting um requirements down with NY's support. Um so we use those channels as a vehicle to communicate publicly and certainly you know if we do have a hearing or things like that we follow those channels for for posting. Um we have also done um if we're going to have something like a clinic um like a vaccine clinic that's outside of a usual clinic at a housing place um or we do uh with TUS um we do like a rabies clinic annually. Um we usually do try and uh put flyers in different places. So those modalities seem to be working um to to communicate with the public. Um certainly worth assessing whether or not there are other modalities that uh the public would be interested in hearing from the board. Uh but they they seem to get the message when we send those

things out that way. Perfect. Um so I'm I'm just going to bring this information back to the regional group, make sure we're, you know, continuing to build something that that works well for Grafton. And I'll say u shout out to to Nancy. She's been super helpful already. and you have this great regional team. Uh they're the stars. They're in the room there. So, uh I'll I'll turn it back over to them unless you have any other questions that I can answer. Let me just check with any questions in the room for Connor or Reica. Any any questions for him?

Great. Nancy is our rock star in the office. We we we stay organized thanks to her very much. So, thank you for all of your kind comments on her as well. And thank you for joining us today. We appreciate uh meeting you and um getting to know a little bit about what what your group is doing sort of in the background to support us as well. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Have a good night. You too. All right. Well, it's your turn. Um so, we thought it would be great if you kind of each want to go around and just introduce yourself. Um your role at the new alliance. Have we have we decided on a name yet? I don't know that we decided on a name yet. We did. Yeah, we did.

I think we're officially the Central Massachusetts Regional Health Department. Okay. Um at our last group meeting that that was the decision there. Regional. Great. Um so I think it would be great just um I know you probably did this at the last meeting that I wasn't able to join um for the kind of rest of the members of the board just to kind of hear who each of you are, what your roles are, maybe a little bit about your your background. I know some of you might be kind of new to an alliance thing and some of you might have some history with that which is both are great. Um so love to hear from from each of you if you want to just go down.

Yeah. So I'm Annette Garcia. I'm the regional health director here. Um I started August 11th so still figuring everything out and getting used to the role. Um I've been in local public health for about seven years um just under and have served on a lot of various roles. So worked as a program assistant. I did inspections for a number of years and most recently I actually come from being a shared service coordinator for another public health excellence grant group um based out of North Andover. So it was six communities that we worked with together there. Um and similar to here we had really varying community sizes. So I worked with as large as the city of Habil um down to the town of North Reading which was about 13,000. Um, so I think that's, you know, a good translation to this group where, you know, our community sizes are all varying in terms of how large they are, what their business infrastructure looks like. Um, but I think that there's there's a lot of commonalities between health departments or between towns, and we hope that this regional health department can really capitalize on those similarities and provide, you know, excellent services to each community.

Great. Can you just bring your microphone a little closer to you? You don't yell as loud as I do, I'm told. Do I need to repeat myself first or No, I think you're good. It picked up, but it's probably a little far away folks. Um, it's just a reminder for you ladies on the end as well. Um, great. Any questions? Welcome. It's great to see you. Thank you again for coming in person. It's of course quite the treat. Happy to be here.

Uh, I'm Bridget Hurley. I am the regional public health nurse. I've been a nurse for a little over 10 years now. I have experience. I first started working in a community health center, went to inpatient at St. Vincent Hospital. I worked there for many years and then I did school nursing for a few years. Got my masters in public health and I worked for the Metro West Shared Public Health Services and Nova Regional Health Services before coming here. Great. Welcome. Thrilled to have you.

Um I'm Mackenzie Faler. I'm the regional what uh the only regional health agent right now. hopefully not much longer. Um I have my masters in public health as well. I've been a regional inspector for the last four years with the um Lester Regional Group. Um so I've been doing it a a little bit. Awesome.

That's great. Thank you all. Uh we always find too when you all report things to us or you do your um inspections, we are not necessarily the experts in all those things. So, um, we ask questions to understand, you know, kind of where different things came in or, you know, what are the follow-ups from those things. So, don't be surprised, um, when we're like, how'd that go? Um, some some of them are not not unfamiliar to us, but sometimes we're just like, we're not we're not quite sure. Um, and your board composition here, we have a lot of different backgrounds. We have three physicians. I'm a nurse. Um, but we've all worked in very different backgrounds throughout the health care system. Um, and some folks have lived in Grafton for a very long time. Some of us are newer. Um, so it's kind of I think it's a nice mix. Um, Karen, we have one more board member who um has been on the board for I think 20 years. So she comes with a wealth of knowledge of and experience from our community as well as of course Nancy who has been um with our health department for a very long time. Um, we met with our select board was it last month?

Yes. it all feels like it's going by very quickly. Um, and we do that periodically now. Um, which I guess happened in the past and now we're re kind of doing it so we can talk to them a little bit about what some of our priorities are, where any of our challenges are. Um, and so of course we didn't know necessarily about all of you just yet. So, um, what we said to them and we'll say to you is, um, we understand we won't have every single thing in place right away. So, we want to be patient while also making sure that we kind of continue to move Grafton forward with those things that we had started to kind of get back in with. Um, but we also want to be a resource and supportive for all of you, understanding that you all come with rich backgrounds, but you're also getting to know our communities and the players. Um, so just know that we're here to answer questions. We'll try and be as responsive as possible. Uh, we all do work, I think. Um, so we try and be responsive. Uh, you and I will connect a little bit more for sure. Um, so we just we appreciate the partnership and we um want to be supportive to make sure that we're as successful as possible. It's very exciting. I know this is something that has been thought about for a long time and yet also happening very quickly. Right. Great. Anybody for any questions or comments for the new team before we get into their updates? Great.

Thank you guys for coming. Yeah. Um, all right. So, um, quick kind of review of any inspections, the health and well, we we modify this. It used to say COVID, flu, and all this stuff, and we're like, we're just going to call it the alliance inspection, health and wellness update. Um, so whatever portions of the report you want to sort of give us highlights on. Um, historically, we'll get like, you know, how many how many inspections have happened and things like that as well, but if you want to give I don't know if you want to give nursing first and then

inspection. So I pulled the data from Maven which is a state epide epidemiology site. There were three diseases that had confirmed cases in Grafton. So influenza had two cases in August. Corona had seven cases and neurovirus had two. Um typical slight increase from the previous month of flu and COVID. Um kind of the trend. I'm not getting daily cases, but I might get one, you know, a week either pediatric or adult case coming through of those. Um, as far as West Nile goes, so the report I pulled was from the 29th of August, and at that time there were no human cases. There's now three within the state. None in town. Um, I don't think actually any in our region.

Yeah, it's in northern North Middle Sex. Yeah. But so we partner with the Central Mass Mosquito Control Project and they continue to monitor pools and provide designated street spraying after positive pools are detected. However, they will stop accepting residential spray requests as of the 29th of August. They're continuing to spray as necessary for schools, town events, and virus detections though. So they're still monitoring all those for us. Um what else? There was one case um of vibrio up at Buzzard's Bay. So there was an alert put out. I um attend weekly epi meetings. So they're zoom and they're all the epies from the state. So the epidemiologist from there said it was a really great learning experience to see how people deal with things like that. It's not a common thing to see but just to be on alert um for that. And then with the measles activity, it is slowing down. Um, Texas has determined that is no longer considered an outbreak because it has been more than 42 days since a new case. And that's the CDC's recommendation as far as when an outbreak should end. Um, as of August 26, there was 1,48 confirmed cases of measles in 43 jurisdictions. Um, something just to keep on the radar though is that Canada is currently experienced a measles outbreak. So, there has been high incidences there. the case count and rates um far exceed those in the United States. They've reported 4,638 confirmed and probable cases so far in August 2025.

It looks like nothing in Massachusetts. Yeah, still no. I think the closest was still Rhode Island, Vermont. Um nothing in New Hampshire. I don't think Connecticut either. I think it was just Rhode Island and Vermont were the two that were and those were earlier. So nothing new has come up from those. Any questions?

Thank you. And these um we do um post these nursing reports on our website as well. Okay. Um we just do a little bit of a summary here for the group to be able to ask questions and um give reminders to the community about um vaccines are still available. Um there was an announcement um and of course just the recommended precautions if you're not feeling well, things like that. Um, inspections. Hi. So, um, go ahead, Verdica. Sorry. Go ahead.

I have a quick question. Uh, with regards to, you know, the vaccines, uh, does the board of health, um, you know, provide any kind of vaccine clinics or, you know, right now the cases are still very low. Uh, one would do, do do we typically do that? And if so, like do we follow CDC recommendations or with the current scenario, what is the plan?

Yeah, so we we were doing vaccine clinics. I think we recently had one for folks that needed um uh boosters, but also um people that were up for it wasn't only COVID and flu that we did. I think we did some other rounds of vaccine, so people were up for second rounds. Is that correct? So, we have one planned for August. I believe you guys are the 26th. That's Friday. September 26th or we had one. Yes. I'm sorry. September 26th. Um, we So, we're not a certified vaccine site right now from the state because we're so new. So, Worcester was the one that they house their own vaccines. We don't have that ability at the moment. We kind of started at a funny time where it is high vaccine season. Yeah.

It's just a process to get that going. Um it's on our list of things to look into and get going. So hopefully by next year, but we partnered with Shaw's pharmacy, right? And they'll be providing the vaccines at the senior center for a clinic for here in town. Yeah. And I think the guidance was in Massachusetts that DPH had some of their own recommendations for Massachusetts to follow. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, it seems like they're kind of going they're doing their own thing where the vaccine will be available. There's been all this um news and people calling and asking would they be able to get the vaccine if their insurance didn't cover it if they didn't fall under having a health condition, but Massachusetts has signed an order that the vaccine will be available and insurance companies will have to pay. Right. So, we'll follow Massachusetts guidance. Thank you. Yeah, great question. Let's see. Anything else? Yeah. Uh, inspections. Thank you.

All right. So, yeah, for the last few weeks, um, I've done in town 26 food inspections, um, one housing and then 11 nuisance inspections. Oh, wow. You've been busy. A little bit. Just break it right in. Yep. Body art inspection. Oh, yeah. That, too. Oh, yeah. And we attempted to do the uh in as well, but that didn't happen. Yeah. Any um for any of the inspections, any not inspections, but the um sort of complaints, violations, any kind of repeat areas that we should know about.

A lot of the nuisance complaints were given to me by the building department. Um, and I think a lot of it had to do with um kind of like abandoned properties or or and I think there was a little bit of confusion over our involvement with those. So I think maybe it's been clarified now, but yeah, we're happy to go out anytime there's a complaint about anything just to Sometimes when pests start showing up, we start getting phone calls. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. And um I think and you may have already done this but certainly um a summary of what the inspections are to Nancy will be and usually she'll try and give those to us. So we might have some targeted questions around oh we think we've seen this this place kind of looked at a couple of times. You know what are sort of next steps? um you'll see that you don't do the tobacco inspections, but you'll all see that as well when we kind of go down that path that sometimes you have sometimes the same people are brand new and a lot of times that's our conversation of is maybe re-education not working um you know if the pe same people keep having to call um trash is a big thing uh overflowing dumpsters right and and pests because of that. Yeah.

Um so that'll be that'll be helpful for us to prep as well. Any questions? Always forget to pause. That's why I'm trying to make sure I pause. All right. Thank you. Um I'm going to hand it over to you, Bill, on it's PEP, right? Is that how we call it? PEP. Public health emergency preparedness. There are all these acronyms. Yes, we love acronyms.

I have not mastered them. I did I did go to a meeting of theirs in Sturbridge five weeks ago and I went to another meeting last week and one of the things that they had talked about was that they were sorry we can't hear oh into your microphone mic closer. Thank you.

Do you hear me now? Okay. The um one of the things they said is they are requiring all their um uh towns to perform a desktop um h emergency um activity and it has to be turned into them by the end of the year. basically um this was received with great enthusiasm by everyone in the room because basically no one was in a position to be able to do this. Um, I did however go to a meeting of the Grafton Emergency Management Agency last week and was delighted to discover that they had done a tabletop um um activity um in June of this year and they've been kind enough to provide me with their afteraction report and improvement plan. Their um um plan involved three train derailments which um resulted in various health issues. Um um and I I I forget the the details but the uh but they were done in concert with people in the Blackstone Valley and they also involved uh Milford Regional Medical Center which is now part of UMass Memorial um the UMass Memorial System. So, my hope is that this is my out that um and I've already um taken the

initiative of emailing it to the person from the um public health uh emergency um people, preparedness people, hoping that in fact they'll embrace this as something we were we were represented. the fire and police from Grafton were part of this process. Um I'm not sure how they or why they are kind of disengaged from us, you know, in the sense that um it seems like we're going on in parallel um tracks, but they clearly had this um it was funded. They had an outside consultant run it.

Wow. I mean, when you read the um It it's obviously fairly um impressive in terms of being uh you know very complete and so forth. Um having never really seen one before I was impressed. So, um, so my hope is I'm going to get a a re response from Pamela Masters, who is the person, um, who is the PEP person,

and that this will satisfy the requirement for this year. Um if that fails to occur, um they did say that they would offer the possibility of a regional tabletop exercise that all interested um communities uh could participate in and that would be November 20th. Um I don't know if this is all something you've all heard about or anything. You're shaking your heads. They uh I mean I I so I don't know but um but I was certainly happy to hear that they had done one.

Y um I did get invited to um participate in their training program. going to be um so I I I felt obliged to do that if this gets us out of the um so yeah I mean especially if there's like a a biio medical type emergency if we could apply the same principles to what's already being done and we are part of like our ambulance response is regionalized as well so and fire so we'll call in other communities broader than the three with with you all

um I think that makes sense um that it kind of be part of something we have in the community and or part of the regional. Right. So my hope is that I'll get a response saying, "Gee, that looks great." Wonderful. Great job, Grafton. I'll I'll soft pedal the fact that none of us knew about it or participated in it. Well, we'll know now, right? We all know now, but at least Grafton was represented. and um and if we were to do it ourselves, we were to to have fire and uh police involved and so forth. So, I think uh my uninitiated um impression of it is that we're going to be okay.

Okay, great. Pamela's very very responsive, I think. So, hopefully she'll be able to guide us if we're not on the right path.

Yes. Uh the next thing on the list was the uh Grafton opioid recovery community partnership update. Uh this is the subcommittee we've set up in the last several months and we've begun to spend some of the opioid settlement money that was given to each of the towns in the Commonwealth. We actually are ahead of where most other U communities are. Um, and I I think the word is out that we are ahead because we had representatives from Middle Sex County and um I don't know other other municipalities that are not in our standard catchment area. Um but uh you know I think that they are actually I think um becoming much more active. They've had a couple of Narcan training episodes. one of which was quite well attended, had 30 people um there. Uh they also sponsored a a um a vigil for overdose families. Um um and next weekend there's a whiffle ball um tournament that we've been invited to participate in. Of course, they have no idea of how futy I am with the whiffle ball. Um but I think uh I think we are making um some progress with that. And you know this organization um uh actually has a um a recovery house in South Grafton and uh a former member of our board Dan Finn discovered them. Of course he's lived in Grafton his entire life so he's well connected. Uh but these people were

flying under the radar as far as the rest of us. But um I I do think that um it's it's going to work out I think quite quite well. It also coincided with the fact that they had had funding from the Worcester District Attorney's Office that had um that had been sunseted. So they were actually looking to um replace that funding and and the funds that we um are able to provide them um appear to be able to do that in a satisfactory uh manner. um the ambulance update. I have actually I have

you have something well I have something that relates to that because at the um Grafton Emergency Management Agency meeting Todd Kramer was I see our friend Todd Kramer is on here. Todd Kramer was there. Yeah. And um he is on the uh ambulance subcommittee

and uh he he pointed out that he had met me at our previous board meeting and he brought he brought up the issue of um a nursing care facility that we have in our community that he feels really is not up to snuff. Um I think they apparently get calls very frequently for things that are not really emergent, right?

And um that's that's one of the issues, but he also has concerns that it's just not a um it's not a place that he would want his parents. Um and um I don't I don't know what the um oversight is. This is a level four facility. So it's not a it's not a skilled nursing facility. It's a it's basically a rest home. It is a rest home. And I've been trying to figure out uh what the oversight of that is.

I I have that. So So as I said to Todd at the last meeting, they are regulated by DPH. I do have contacts that I can connect him with. I just needed to come back for my vacation. Okay, good, good, good, good.

I took a vacation. Um, so I'm I was back like last week. Um, so um I what I said to Todd was that we would connect him with representatives from DPH. um because his concern is really more about um you know, especially with what happened in Fall River at the assisted living community with emergency protocols. Um whether or not they're required to have an AED, which they may or may not be. Um but they and they have um buds and things like that, u folks for uh dissatisfied residents.

Um we have been involved from a board of health perspective for that particular location. it was more of a plumbing issue. So those are the kinds of things that sort of fall under us whereas some of those other care concerns are under DPH. Um so what we told him last time was that we would connect him with a representative from DPH to be able to share his concerns, see if that might trigger somebody going out there. Um but I think we have to be mindful as well that there's there are some things that aren't over our oversight as the board of health. Um,

so that's what we had talked to him about last time and I know he he has he does tend to bring it up in a couple of different locations to make sure that it's not lost. Um, I just thought it was me, you know. No, no, no, no. And and they are a location that comes up with ambulances that they call n they're um because they're not a nursing facility as well and but they're not an assisted living. So they have more clinical folks than an assisted living would but less than a skilled nursing. Right. Right. And again it's also you know training and expectation and also deescalating of

clinical or nonclinical situations that might come up. So um they were listed as one of the stakeholders to engage with our ambulance um vendor to talk about you know um different ways to kind of handle that. But there's also certain things we're not going to be able to force um private private entities. Apparently that DPH though had certainly has less direct um involvement with the level four facility than they do with a level two or three facility.

Level four is supposed to be able to take some of the higher people. So they should be regulated in the same fashion. So we'll we can look at that. Which facility? Crescent Manor. Yeah, I think that's the only rest home that we have in town. Um, yeah. Yeah, it's a rest home. It's not a skilled nursing facility. Correct. So, so I mean I was a medical director of a nursing home for 30 years. So we were when the DPH showed up everyone was

it's different than a skilled nursing facility but they are regulated by DPH and they do have higher regulations than like Todd's impression is because they had reached out to them because of the Fall River episode and and so forth and that they were not really that responsive. DPH wasn't right. I might have some other contacts for him then. Yeah. Well, no, no. I mean, I think it's Yeah, like the payer side maybe engage as well. Um, yeah, because there are um there are there is more oversight with them that that could and should possibly be. Okay. Yeah.

So, that that's my overlap with the ambulance update.

I had a feeling when I saw that here. Um, yeah. So, what with the update for the subcommittee, um, as I said, we had to kind of pause some of that because we're going to be asking for funding from, uh, our town administrator likely to try and roll some things up so that um, again, we have a clear um, sort of expectation for a AEDS and first aid. Um we have a very long list of places we would like to do that in, but we really need to properly prioritize um areas of greatest concern like the schools for example, the municipal center, the library. Um and then you know looking at the areas that are uh maybe less populated but could still benefit from that. Um, and it overlaps with the ambulance committee because Todd kind of he was preparing a um safety plan for for the town. Um, and then is also appointed to a new role in emergency management. Um, and while our response times for ambulances are good in town, um, they could always be better, especially where we're in this um, uh, sort of joint thing with other towns. Um, and you know, we have addresses for where there's more and more calls and whether or not those calls actually result in an actual transfer to the hospital. So, we'd like to try and bring some of those calls down by identifying what maybe unmet needs exist or what education there is. Um, so Crescent Manor is one of them. There's some senior housing and other kind of housing locations. Um, while also having to, you know, protect HIPPA and things like that. We can't necessarily do um um resident specific, but we can kind of look at the community in general. Um and again, of course, our housing partners in town have some limitations to what they can and cannot do as well, but um trying to identify um what resources we can put in place. Um, so like Todd had

some examples for us at the last meeting we had that some communities if they were finding that the fire department was responding for falls and lift assist um you know maybe we get a grant to get some of the non-skid socks and hand those out in those communities things like that to try and um curb some of those occurrences. Um so lots to happen on that. What I said at the last meeting was once I was back from vacation, uh we have the list of stakeholders we wanted to have a meeting with the ambulance committee on um and put something together for Evan about uh potential cost of doing like a multi-service um contract for multiple stakeholders in town and hopefully again moving those those initiatives forward. But we were on pause as I said for a little bit. Uh

anything else on ambulance subcommittee? ambulance force aids subcommittee. Uh okay. Um I realize that I skipped over a very very important point on our agenda. Uh and that is to um entertain a motion from uh one of our members regarding appointing Annette Garcia and McKenzie as health agents on behalf of the Grafton Board of Health. So this is Andrew Shaluca. Um, I would like to make a motion to appoint Annette Garcia and Mackenzie Fauler as health agents on behalf of the Roger Board of Health. Is there a second? This is Bill Muller. I second that. Roll call. Andrew.

Bill Muller. I Jen Maynard. I welcome officially. Okay. Um, any old or new business that we haven't covered yet before I go through? Um, we have a few sets of minutes to do some motions on. The reason I printed this out actually is there's a a brief discussion of what their tabletop thing was. Yeah. I don't know if you're interested or not, but um I'll I'll give it to you to read your Sure. I got the other report that's there. All right. But yeah, this is great. Thank you. This this is more succinct. Oh, perfect. I have some for you guys.

Sure. So, this is um Bill is just sharing with us the um meeting minutes from the Grafton Emergency Management Agency um their tabletop discussion. Um can can we make sure Nancy gets a copy of this as well? So, we'll add it to our materials. I will. Thank you. Super helpful. Okay. Now, for meeting minutes, um we had no mail or correspondence this time. Uh for meeting minutes we have um June 2nd, 2025, August 12th. Wait, let me think. Hang on a second. Can we do Radika? When did you join us? July.

So we July. Okay. So we have three of us for um for June 2nd. So we'll have to hold off on that. But we can do um 82 well 812 and 813. I can't even read 8:13, right? I can't even read my own writing. Um, would anybody any discussion on the August 12th meeting minutes, which I believe is the one what we had with the select board, and then our meeting on the 13th. Any um discussion on those two sets of agend uh meeting minutes sent over by Nancy? No.

Okay. Would anybody like to make a motion? You have to do them separately. Go ahead. Okay. This is Andrew Chalupa. I make a motion uh to accept the minutes from the August 12th, 2025 meeting. Is there a second? This is Bill Muller. I second that motion. Andrew Chalupka. I Bill Mer. I Jen Mayor I see sometimes I just go on autopilot when I forget to speak. This is Andrew Chalupa. I make a motion to accept the minutes for August 13, 2025. Is there a second? Bill Muller. I second that. Roll call. Andrew Chuka. I Bill Muller.

Ira. Jen Mayard. I thank you. Um, we have upcoming meetings. I can't believe it's going to be October. October 6, 2025. Um, remind me, were we planning on doing hybrid? We were going to try and do hybrid for that. Or was this going to be our last hybrid? I don't remember. Come on. I remember it was going to be a hybrid next. Next one. until October. Yeah, hybrid and then virtual starting in November.

Got it. Okay. And then we have Thank you, Rodica. Uh November 10th, 2025 and then December 8th, 2025. Um and we did set um I believe quarter 1 of 2026. Don't know where the time goes. Um any other last minute walk-on items? No. No. Would anybody like to make a motion? This is Andrew Chalupa. I make a motion to adjourn. This is Bill Mer. I second that motion. Roll call. Andrew Chalupka. I Bill Muller. I

Jen Maynard. I All right. Thank you everyone for joining us and looking forward to working with you all. We'll see you next month. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Recording stopped. Thank you guys for coming.