WHEN ROBBIE GOLDSTEIN took the reins as the state’s new public health commissioner in April, he brought national experience dealing with the public health crisis of our time. As senior adviser to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Goldstein was at the center of the country’s public health response to the COVID pandemic. 

Walensky had been a mentor to Goldstein at Massachusetts General Hospital, where both previously worked as infectious disease physicians. In a conversation on this week’s episode of The Codcast, Goldstein picked up on a favorite axiom of Walensky’s in talking about their work together at the CDC. 

“We would say to each other almost on a daily basis, hard things are hard – and we can do hard things,” he told Codcast hosts John McDonough of Harvard’s school of public health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute.

Goldstein returned repeatedly to the idea that many public health issues are complex and not given to simple solutions, but that progress nonetheless can be made with focused effort.  

He said the pandemic exposed the poor state of public health readiness nationally to deal with a problem of that scale. “What I wish we knew back then was the importance of preparedness in our emergency response infrastructure. I think it is reasonable to say that we entered 2020 with a pretty weak, anemic preparedness infrastructure in this country,” Goldstein said. Massachusetts “was likely better than much of the rest of the country,” he said. “But even here, we were not as prepared as we should be.” 

One way the state can be more prepared for such a crisis in the future is by better coordinating the work of local public health departments. That’s the aim of pending legislation, dubbed State Action for Public Health Excellence Act, which Goldstein voiced support for. The bill would set uniform credentialing standards for those working local public health departments, and would support more efforts at shared services among local departments, many of which are tiny offices  in small Massachusetts towns. It would build on a grant program the state established in 2020 to move public health programs in the same direction. 

“The first version was an enormous step,” Goldstein said of the grant program. “This is another enormous step forward to support local public health,” he said of the pending legislation. “If we provide adequate resources and now we provide people with a rubric to judge themselves and the technical assistance, the training, the support that they need to get them there, we will see a real transformation of local public health.” 

Goldstein defended the public health-focused effort to deal with the seemingly intractable problems in the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Boston. 

“There seems to be very little, if any, progress that’s been made in resolving that,” said McDonough, who pointed to a recent Boston Globe commentary piece suggesting the situation represents a failure of the public health approach. 

Goldstein acknowledged the persistence of the problems with drug overdoses and a homeless population at the encampment there, but he pushed back against the claim that the public health-oriented approach that’s been in place has failed. 

“We have to remember the counterfactual,” he said. “I think public health has done a tremendous amount at Mass. and Cass and to address substance use and homelessness across the Commonwealth. What is hard to quantify, what’s hard to understand is … how much bigger would the devastation have been had we not been at the table and had we not had public health outreach workers on the street at Mass and Cass, had we not had an engagement center in the South End to bring people in to get them recovery services to make sure that those who wanted treatment beds had treatment beds available?” 

MICHAEL JONAS

 

FROM COMMONWEALTH

Marijuana bars: Cannabis regulators are kicking the tires on social consumption sites, with the goal of writing regulations allowing them to move forward. One member of the Cannabis Control Commission traveled to California to check out how that state approved them. Read more.

Somerset infighting: Tension boils over at Somerset zoning board meeting, as the members steamroll a challenge to the panel’s oversight of a proposed offshore wind transmission cable manufacturing plant at Brayton Point. Read more.

OPINION

Frustration: Paul Rehme of Boston says Mass Save, the ratepayer funded effort to increase energy efficiency, is frustrating for condo owners like himself. Read more.

Save the trees: Eric Kramer of Reed Hilderbrand LLC encourages Massachusetts residents to do their part  in preserving the urban forest. Read more.

All in on tutoring: Corey Yarbrough of 826 Boston says tutoring is the key to turning around MCAS test scores. Read more.

 

FROM AROUND THE WEB

MUNICIPAL MATTERS  

Danvers is leaning toward a $200 trash fee to help cover an emerging budget gap. (Salem News)

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian marchers gathered in Boston to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. (Boston Herald)

ELECTIONS

Politics watchers in Boston say City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson is likely to cruise to reelection next month despite comments last week that described the Hamas terrorist killing of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians as a “military operation.” (Boston Herald)

Worcester voters will consider Laura Clancey, Sue Mailman,Tracy O’Connell Novick, and Maureen Binienda for two school committee at-large seats. (Worcester Telegram)

There will be six contested Barnstable Town Council seats before residents at the November 7 Town Meeting. (Cape Cod Times)  

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Climate change and inflation are wreaking havoc in the home insurance market. (Boston Globe) CommonWealth wrote recently about the increasing willingness to consider managed retreat from coastlines, in part because of the climate-imperiled insurance environment.

EDUCATION

The Barr Foundation donates $200,000 to Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington to continue a learning approach that helped the school land the highest biology grades in the county. (Berkshire Eagle)

The Boston School Department has launched a facilities data dashboard showing the condition of each of the district’s school buildings. (Boston Globe)

A new analysis underscores the strong correlation between high SAT scores and family income. (New York Times)

Berklee College of Music continues to stay silent on why its president, Erica Muhl, was ousted three months ago after only two years on the job. (Boston Globe)

A proposal to allow student representatives to vote on the New Bedford School Committee is dividing elected officials. (New Bedford Standard-Times)

ARTS/CULTURE

Native American remains, taken from burial sites in Springfield and Longmeadow, will be returned to their ancestral grounds. But hundreds of thousands of native remains are still held in collections, despite a 1990 law mandating their repatriation. (MassLive)

TRANSPORTATION

Though she has blamed the prior administration for flaws in the Green Line Extension construction, Gov. Maura Healey said there is no evidence that Gov. Charlie Baker himself knew of the problems. (Boston Herald)

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

After a long steep decline, the population of North Atlantic right whales appears to be stabilizing. (WBUR)

MEDIA

In an editors’ note, the New York Times cites shortcomings in its initial coverage of the explosion that rocked a Gaza City hospital last week, which led with Hamas claims that it was the result of an Israeli strike. We “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was,” it said. 

PASSINGS

Lee Berk, the former president of Berklee College of music – and the school’s namesake – died at age 81. (Boston Globe)