LYNNFIELD — The Board of Health has hired an interim health director, who will help them with the evaluation of the department and the hiring of a new full-time director.
Ruth Clay, a former director of the Melrose Health Department, has joined the Lynnfield Health Department to fill the interim position and facilitate the search for a full-time candidate, said Town Administrator Robert Dolan.
“She is among the best in her field in the Greater Boston area,” Dolan said. “The Board of Health wanted someone with depth to lead us through this time.”
Dolan admitted that it is a challenging environment in which to be looking for a health director, after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is not an easy time to find a health director,” said Dolan. “Many of them are retiring or quitting because they are burnt out.”
Dolan described Clay as an innovator in terms of broadening public health and including drug and alcohol awareness as a factor affecting physical health. She has dealt with many issues in her career such as the H1N1 virus, major storms and fires, as well as school nursing, Dolan said.
To take up this assignment, Clay, who previously worked with Dolan in Melrose, came out of retirement.
“I wasn’t planning on coming out of retirement, but I worked for Rob when he was the mayor of Melrose,” she said. “I like working with Rob and, as it turns out, I know a lot of the people that work in Lynnfield also.”
Clay has been the director of the Melrose Health Department for about 25 years, overseeing the regional health district of Melrose-Wakefield for 13 years and Melrose-Wakefield-Reading for four.
Under her management, the health district ran a number of different programs including restaurant inspections; housing complaints; general nuisance complaints; licensing of camps, tanning salons, public swimming pools and semi-public swimming pools; public-health nursing; and animal control. Her department hosted a regional Tobacco Collaborative for tobacco prevention in addition to taking care of substance-abuse prevention programs and staffing.
Clay said Lynnfield is somewhat different from her previous health district, first of all, because it is smaller. It has more homeowners than renters, hence, fewer complaints.
“In every community, there are certain basic functions that every health department does and it depends on your community ― whether you have a lot or a little,” Clay said.
For example, until MarketStreet Lynnfield was built, the town did not have many restaurants and food-service establishments.
“Now, of course, there is. So things change,” said Clay.
However, the biggest difference between Lynnfield and some other communities is that the town has septic sewage and its water is fully supplied by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA). This means that the department needs to have experts on the team who have the expertise and the certification to witness the field work and review the plants, Clay said.
“It is time consuming and it is a very specific expertise,” said Clay.
She is planning to spend a few months in Lynnfield, helping to conduct some assessment work for the department. The town will hire an outside consultant to assess where the Health Department is at, how it is performing statutory requirements, and what other programs could be or should be introduced. Based on the findings, Clay and the health director search committee will come up with a job description and start advertising.
“We want to get a new permanent person in here as soon as possible,” Clay said. “We hope in spring, there should be somebody on board.”
Meanwhile, Clay, who studied community health at Tufts College, said that this job is “kind of fun” for her.
“It’s who I am. It’s what I do,” Clay said.
