OSWEGO COUNTY – Oswego County Health Department staff were recognized by the New York State Department of Health (DOH) for their important work. Meghan Allison, Betty Dunsmoor and Emily Hinman were named to the “Public Health Works!” Honor Roll for their outstanding commitment to protecting public health.
“Local public health workers are essential to maintaining healthy communities,” said Dr. James McDonald, commissioner of the New York State Department of Health. “The success of public health initiatives depends on the dedication of workers providing care and education in the community. We honor their commitment to improving the health of all New Yorkers.”
Oswego County Public Health Director Vera Dunsmoor also commended her staff.
“The Oswego County Health Department is fortunate to have such dedicated and hard-working employees,” she said. “We’re proud to recognize Betty, Meghan and Emily for all that they do to improve the health and well-being of our residents. They have each faced unique challenges in their roles and all went above and beyond their required job responsibilities in their mission to protect public health.”
Betty Dunsmoor has been the manager of the Healthy Families Program for Oswego County since 2022. First implemented in 2016, the initiative is an evidenced-based home visiting program for pregnant women and new parents.
As a licensed medical social worker, Dunsmoor’s career was focused on end-of-life care with the Oswego County Hospice Program. Following that program closure, she had to quickly learn new skills that would allow her to manage the Healthy Families Program. Through determination and perseverance, she endured months of training, staff changes, shortages and more.
From its start, the Healthy Families Program faced challenges with funding, retaining staff and families, and meeting performance indicators. Within one year under Dunsmoor’s leadership, the program transformed from “at-risk of closure” to a successful initiative. Currently, it serves more families than ever before and is meeting nearly all performance indicators.
Meghan Allison and Emily Hinman are early intervention specialists in the Children with Special Needs Division. Their work was vital throughout the health department’s pandemic response. They assisted with media monitoring, answering the COVID-19 hotline, conducting contact tracing, data management and vaccination clinics. Once response operations began to slow and health department operations and programs began to ramp back up, they continued to help with the COVID-19 hotline and working vaccination clinics.
Throughout clinic operations, Allison and Hinman became the “go-to” screeners for vaccination clinics; first at mass vaccination sites, then onsite at the health department. They made themselves available for clinic days, re-arranging their primary duties to be able to assist at clinics. As more age groups became eligible for vaccines and doses were added to the schedule, screeners were required to navigate multiple systems to enter patient information and document doses accurately. They did so with ease and their affable personalities gave comfort to patients attending the vaccination clinic.
“Public Health Works!” Honor Roll was established in 2007 to recognize the local public health workforce as an essential component in making New York one of the healthiest states in the country.
The New York State Department of Health relies on local health departments to promote, protect and improve the health of residents. Core public health services administered by New York’s 57 local health departments and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene include communicable disease control, chronic disease prevention, community health assessment, environmental health and emergency preparedness and response. Without these local health departments and their dedicated employees, these essential services would not be provided to residents.
For more information about the Oswego County Health Department and its services, call at 315-349-3545 or visit https://health.oswegocounty.com/.
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