EASTHAMPTON — Easthampton’s health director is leaving her job next month to become a regional public health trainer for Hampshire and Franklin counties, one of the first positions being filled as part of a large overhaul of public health services in the state.

Bri Dupras, who has served as health director in Easthampton since January 2021, will start her new role at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments on March 9. As a public health trainer, Dupras will be responsible for training other health departments on how to properly conduct inspections.

The new position is part of a statewide effort to “make public health more equitable throughout the state,” Dupras said. The position was created in the wake of a 2019 report produced by a Special Commission on Local and Regional Public Health, called the “Blueprint for Public Health in Excellence,” that identified shortcomings in public health services and made a series of recommendations for improvement.

The commission, created in 2016, was charged with assessing the “effectiveness and efficiency of municipal and regional public health systems” and suggesting how to strengthen the delivery of public health services and preventive measures, according to Phoebe Walker, who served on the commission and is currently the director of community services at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments.

The Blueprint report found that Massachusetts has one of the most decentralized public health systems in the country, as each municipality is responsible for its own public health activities, which vary from community to community. Despite having a separate health jurisdiction for each community, many local departments are unable to keep up with the growing list of responsibilities, the report states.

“We have more health departments than California and Texas combined,” Walker said.

At the time, the state’s public health systems were also among the most underfunded states in the country. That changed in 2021 when the Legislature allocated $200 million for local and regional boards of health as part of the $4 billion federal COVID-19 relief funding spending bill that used part of the state’s share of American Rescue Plan Act funding.

With that funding, local and regional boards will use that money to repair some of the shortcomings identified by the commission, including funding regional collaborations of local public health with more nurses and inspectors; establishing a good data system to measure public health performance; and using data to plan improvements.

The last part of those sweeping changes includes creating a statewide workforce credentialing system where standards and certifications are the same across the board. That’s where Dupras’ new role comes in, said Walker.

Dupras is among the first to be hired in the state as part of these changes, and she will work out of a field training hub based at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. The hub is one of 10 throughout the state. In addition to all of the communities in Franklin and Hampshire counties, she will also cover the Hampden County towns of Ludlow and Palmer, and the Worcester County towns of West Brookfield and Warren.

“This is a huge effort for the state,” Walker said. “This means that zip codes will no longer determine how public health protections work — it will be the same everywhere. We’re excited to have Bri bring her set of skills here as the state is building this whole new system.”

In addition to her role as the health director, Dupras was previously the city’s health agent. In her five-year tenure with Easthampton, she said one of her proudest moments includes building up the city’s health department, which now includes a total of nine employees.

“I’m proud that our department is not just inspections — we’re making great strides with our harm reduction work and anonymous ordering system,” she said. “The City Council, mayor and Board of Health have been incredibly supportive, which makes such a difference in our impact on the community.”

Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said in a statement that “the health director’s position has two sides — inspection and public well-being. Bri embraced this, then built our current Department of Public Health in the midst of a pandemic.”

Prior to Easthampton, Dupras worked as an inspector for the Greenfield Health Department and also as a health agent for Southampton.

In a letter to the City Council, she expressed gratitude to the council for its support of the city’s health department.

“This was a very difficult decision to make. I have absolutely loved my time in Easthampton throughout the past almost five years,” she said. “However, I want to start a family, and a department head can be a heavy responsibility at times; as a future mom, I want to be present, and I know it will be hard for me to set my own boundaries with work.”

 

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