Board of Health - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the June 12th, 2026 Grafton Board of Health meeting. As a preliminary matter, this is Jennifer Miner, chair of the Board of Health. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Andrew Chalupka. Andrew Chalupa here. Karen Gusti Govin. Karen Gusteski Govin here. Bill Muller. Bill Mhler here. Radika Pv. Radika Pu here. Staff and anticipated speakers on the agenda. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Nancy Connors. Nancy Connors here.

Annette Garcia. Annette Garcia here. Thank you. I'd like to open the meeting. May I have a motion to open the meeting? This is Andrew Chalupa. I move to open tonight's meeting. A second. This is Bill Mer. I second Andrew's motion. Uh, roll call. Andrew Chalupa. I Bill Mer. I

goes I deny I. This open meeting of the Grafton Board of Health is being conducted uh remotely 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, a 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 requirement 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.graftton-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 a comment on an agenda item, please utilize the Q&A feature in Zoom, please include in include your full name and address when submitting comment for this meeting. Uh we are convening entirely by video call via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that all attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may able to see you and to take care not to screen share your computer. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the video video 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 we turn 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 me the board members to provide any comment, questions, or motions. Please identify yourself by

your 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 to 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 to identify yourself. Finally, any votes on any motions made during this meeting will be conducted by RO call. Okay. Hi everyone. Welcome. Please look out.

Uh and just acknowledging McKenzie and Allison from the alliance have also joined us. Welcome. Um so we uh have a lean meeting tonight or a lean agenda so far. Um so we'll kick it over first to Annette and team for alliance updates. Awesome. Thanks so much. Um, so first I want to introduce Allison to our team. She started with us last Monday um, as our regional public health coordinator. So Allison, I'll give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the board.

Yeah, thank you so much, Annette. Hi, everyone. Good evening. My name is Allison Collins Turner and I just started last week um, with the the group and really excited to be here um, and work with all of you. Thank you so much. Um, so Allison's going to be partly managing the public health excellence grant, um, and then also helping us build our capacity with some of our partners. So, you'll certainly see her at some of the, um, various meetings, um, in Grafton, uh, you know, like emergency preparedness or the opioid committee um, to really help bolster the work that a lot of these groups are already doing and helping align the work across our three municipalities. Um, so I think it's going to be a huge asset to be able to develop some more of our programming outside of the context of our inspectional and nurse work. Um, which we're really excited about. Um, in terms of other big uh public health excellence news, the um, Grafton Select Board voted last week to approve the intermunicipal agreement. So we now have a fully executed intermunicipal agreement, which is excellent. Um, that's kind of the crux of this public health excellence group. it sets forward our um advisory board. So, we're excited to have that on board. Um I know you'll be voting later in the meeting, but we're going to be sending out um a doodle poll to set our first um collaborative meeting for the advisory board in February. So, we'll have some big updates, kind of the um you know, halfway point of our first year in this new collaborative. So, we'll be providing some updates on grant spending and some of the um deliverables that we've been able to accomplish so far. Um, and we'll certainly make sure that also is presented to the entire board so that you're all up to date on some of the progress we've made. Um, those are the big updates I can jump into. I don't know if there's separate agenda items. I forget. Um, Bridget wasn't able to be here, so I'll do her nurses report. Um so flu activity across the state is um

increasing in the state dashboard that it uh reports that it's very high flu-l like activity and high flu severity. Um so you know I think over the last month we've really seen those numbers drastically increase. Um statewide there's been 66 deaths related to flu including four pediatric deaths. Um so we're doing a lot of education on um you know how to prevent flu-l like illness. Make sure you're getting your vaccinations, you're staying home when you're sick, you're washing your hands. Um, also making sure to enforce that you should seek care early um if you have are at high risk for symptoms um or they're not getting better to make sure that you're um getting treatment early. Um Bridget's also been busy with routine disease investigations. So in December she conducted four for Grafton alone. Um none of them found any trends or links backs to restaurants. They were all um exposures outside of Grafton. Um another thing was on December 24th, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health issued an alert regarding a potential measles exposure connected to an outofstate adult visitor. The individual traveled through Boston Logan Airport on December 11th and stayed at the Double Tree by Hilton Boston Westboro um and then departed Massachusetts on December 12th. Um because measles is so highly contagious, people were who were in these locations were identified during the times that they may be exposed. Um and the Department of Public Health continues to monitor the situation and advise residents to review vaccination status and seek medical guidance as symptoms develop. Um, so just a reminder to folks to make sure to get those um your routine vaccinations and working with your physician on that. Uh, any questions about the nurses update or or anything you guys are seeing? Seeing none. Uh, quickly I'll go over

the inspection numbers. Um, so in December, um, Michael was conducting inspections in Grafton. He conducted 13 food inspections and one housing inspection. Um, in addition to some followup on some nuisance complaints that we had, um, I think we have a couple of, uh, restaurants that, um, were due in December that we haven't gotten to, but we'll certainly get to them within the next 30 days to make sure that everybody's on track. Um, and then moving through there. I know Nancy was really busy doing permitting renewals at the end of the year, so that's been going very well. Um, and kind of tackling those last ones trickling in. So those are all the updates I have.

Great. Any questions from the members?

Awesome. Um Allison, welcome. Uh you are joining a great team. They've really hit the ground running since we started. They're awesome. We love working with them so far. Um and McKenzie, you have a very cute team member there. So, uh, congrats. [laughter] Uh, all right. Um, let's see. To Annette's point, um, we do have to, um, today talk about an appointment for the CMRHD advisory board. Um, tonight we are in a position I think we can, uh, appoint our primary um, member and then we'll probably do our secondary uh, rep next time. uh we have some inquiries out to see uh who would be willing to do that but um if I'm not mistaken uh I think uh very fortunately Ratica uh Radika has uh accepted um the task to be our our primary person. Um so would one of the members like to make a motion to appoint Ratica as our primary uh rep?

This is Andrew Chalupka. Um, I make them I move that we appoint Ratica Prabu as our primary representative for me. Remind me of the CMRHD advisory board. CMRHD advisory board. Is there a second? This is Aaron Gusteski Govin. I second that motion. Roll call. Andrew Shalupa. I Bill Muller. I Aaron Geski Govin. They go for blue eye. You can abstain. Do I have the [laughter] right? You can abstain.

But uh Jen Mayor and I motion passes. Thank you. We really appreciate you uh jumping in. Um as Annette said, we're expecting to start next month and we'll um we'll get a secondary in there in case you have a conflict or something like that. Okay, thank you for doing that. Yeah. Oh, thank you.

Exciting. We're getting those going. Um so the next item is the ambulance subcommittee. Um, Andrew and I had our stakeholder meeting, long awaited stakeholder meeting, uh, to focus on mostly the ambulance calls and response times. Um, we were really, uh, pleased. We weren't sure based on responses who we were going to have, but we were really pleased that all locations, with the exception of two, and one of us told us that they couldn't make it, um, were able to attend. And we even had a couple of folks that had heard about the meeting and were interested in joining and um weighing in, especially those that work with older adults and in some of the housing locations. Um so I think uh folks were very receptive. They've also um we have some locations with housing and uh healthcare uh in Grafton that also have locations in other communities. So they uh are having similar conversations with um stakeholders like this about what we can do. Um and of course our alliance team members were there which we really appreciate. Um so people were um happy to engage with us. Uh we had some recommendations coming out of that on uh how we can make sure that you know we're really saving the highest need trucks for um the calls that need them. Um so our our plan is to um follow up with that group at the end of February, early March. Uh we have some minutes to share with them, contact information uh and hopefully we can again come out with some tools that will be not only supportive of those locations, but also our ambulance um contractors to make sure that again uh we can continue to have the best access and response times. It's a difficult um thing statewide. Um, so I thought it was again overall really positive. People were um excited to be there. Well, as excited as you can be to to go out in the cold for a meeting. Um,

but Andrew, anything to add to that? No, no, thank you for uh for you and Todd for organizing that. Yeah,

I think it was very very productive for all involved. Yeah, people were happy to see um Todd was able to share some data which we'll try and share with folks and um yeah, it was it was great that the group was receptive and it was sort of uh even before the board had gotten involved um something that the ambulance committee really was hoping to be able to do. So, progress. [laughter] All right, we'll keep you all updated. How about uh Bill? Did you want to give updates on the opioid recovery community partnership? Um uh yes although um I won't have too much to say this evening because [clears throat] their monthly meeting is tomorrow. Of course. [laughter]

Uh I did communicate with Dan uh today and I know that he and Mary Lauria had met with the people from GAP um to basically review what the experience has been. um since our contractual agreement with them uh was initiated last spring. Um and they will be reporting um uh the results of that discussion uh tomorrow. Um I think it's due to be renewed in April or maybe early May. Um, and so it's a it's a um important time to kind of uh take a step back and review what we've accomplished and what the opportunities are for um further uh progress. I think overall the impression has been that uh we've done pretty well. I think that we have a good partner. um they obviously are are um a group that is very experienced in this area um and they're well established and so I think um we're we're we're certainly on the right track. I think it's really a question of whether we can um u take better advantage of that or uh build upon that to um to add to the um services that we can offer to people in Grafton.

So I'll have more to say next month. I promise. Great. Um and uh GAP did actually come to our meeting as well, which we thought was really good, you know, given the overlap of some of the work we're doing together. Right. Right.

Um old and new business um we're pleased to say that our friends at TUS um have already reached out in anticipation for their spring uh rabies clinic. Um, so we are holding the date of I believe it's a Saturday, May 2nd. Um, it'll be in the morning. Um, and so usually a member or two of the board will go, but I think primarily, um, the folks at TUS kind of take the lead. Uh, last year we tried to kind of get the word out so that people could sign up so they could understand capacity, but it was pretty busy last year. So, uh, happy to be able to offer that again. And as we get a little bit closer, more logistics will be shared. I do not think we had any miscellaneous mail or correspondence. Correct, Nancy?

No, everything I've sent me. Great. Um, our next meeting is scheduled for March 9th. Uh, we're anticipating, uh, doing that on Zoom only. Um, and then, um, we will add the list of dates that we came up with last time, which we will hope, uh, as we talked about before we started our meeting, um, we'll probably try and do hybrid as the warmer weather comes in again. Uh, as long as there are rooms available for us at the municipal center. Are there any walk-on items by This meeting is February 9th, correct?

February 9th. Yeah. I'm just jumping right ahead. [laughter] going to get me through this cold weather. I told you I don't want to leave the house [laughter] as I sit right in front of the fire behind me. [laughter] Thank you, Andrew. Yes.

Uh, anybody have any items that we left out? Well, I failed to say also at the top of the hour uh or half hour, uh, happy new year to everyone. Uh hard to believe we are already at 2026, but here we are uh moving right along. So, we appreciate our new partners, uh our new members and all the things that we're going to do in the new year together. Uh with that, as I said, how exciting. Um this was a kind of lean agenda compared to some of the ones we've been having lately. Would anybody like to make a motion? This is Andrew Chalupka. I move that we close tonight's meeting. Is there a second? This is Bill Muller. I second that motion. [clears throat]

Roll call. Andrew Chuka I. Bill Muller. I Karen Weski Govin. I Jen Mayardy. All right. Thanks everyone. Have a great rest of your evening and we'll see you next