Alum Adrienne Epstein Receives Lemuel Shattuck Award.
MPHA Board Members Cheryl Bartlett (left), CEO of New Bedford Community Health, and Stewart Landers (right), senior consultant at John Snow, Inc., present award to honoree Adrienne “Andy” Epstein (center). Photo by Mario Quiroz.
Alum Adrienne Epstein Receives Lemuel Shattuck Award
Adrienne Epstein (SPH ’84) received the Lemuel Shattuck Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association in recognition of her contributions to public health in the Commonwealth over the span of her four-decade career.
Adrienne (“Andy”) Epstein (SPH’84) received the Lemuel Shattuck Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association (MPHA) in recognition of her contributions to public health in the Commonwealth over the span of her four-decade career.
Stewart Landers, senior consultant at John Snow, Inc. (JSI), and former colleague of Epstein’s at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), presented her with the award at a ceremony on June 2, sharing with the audience, “As we have heard from the great, late civil rights activist and US Congressman John Lewis, ‘good trouble’ is an apt expression for the decades of work that Andy has done. Andy is great at doing good while stretching what might have seemed like traditional boundaries. She always looks for how to make innovative ideas work rather than letting potential barriers stop progress.”
Event organizers hailed Epstein as a creative public health program developer and highlighted several of her major accomplishments through the years: Epstein launched a visiting nurse initiative in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, designed a framework for the Commonwealth’s early needle exchange pilot, established a program to make naloxone nasal spray available to those who are not first responders, and helped to develop protocols for medical cannabis.
“Epstein has been at the forefront of critical public health issues, visioning and testing strategies that were once novel and have now become best practice,” wrote the MPHA.
After receiving the award, Epstein asked the audience, “What does it take to address an epidemic such as HIV, COVID-19, opioid use disorder or the epidemic of loneliness? We say it takes a village but what does ‘takes a village’ really mean?… It means everyone is welcome at the table, and understanding that everyone has a role to play. … It means putting the phrase ‘nothing about us without us’ into practice. It means bringing a social justice and health equity lens to all of our work.”
Epstein closed her remarks by discussing her current projects, and said, “Most recently, I have been working with Community Servings, an extraordinary nutrition and food delivery program that again, exemplifies the best of public health efforts, aiming for nutritional equity for people with serious diseases. I have, again, been inspired by the passion and principles that this program and all the people who work there share.”
The MPHA also honored three other award recipients: Dr. Matilde Castiel, commissioner of Worcester Health and Human Services and president of the Massachusetts Large Cities Health Coalition, received the Local Public Health Leadership Award; Kevin Cranston, assistant commissioner and director of the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, received the Paul Revere Award; and Tiana Davis, deputy public health commissioner for the City of Springfield, received the Emerging Leader Alfred Frechette Award.