From left, Dr. Dara D. Méndez, Dr. Joylette Portlock, Dr. Khlood F. Salman and Lisa Scales listen to presentations during the first Allegheny County Board of Health meeting of the year on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Downtown. Portlock is now the only longtime member. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)
The first meeting for eight of the nine board members charged with promoting public health featured calls for disparities data, better communication.
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New members of the Allegheny County Board of Health met for the first time Wednesday, bringing together a diverse group whose expertise ranges from food insecurity in the region, to reproductive justice for Black people, to environmental health and regulating industrial polluters.
In November, County Executive Sara Innamorato appointed eight new board members and reappointed Joylette Portlock, the former executive director of Sustainable Pittsburgh who’s served on the board since 2012. The members were confirmed by County Council in December.
The meeting kicked off a new era of public health policymaking in the county. Iulia Vann, a physician who’s held public health roles across North Carolina, became the new director of the county Health Department in August. Advocates hope her leadership — along with the new board’s oversight of department programs and policies — will move the needle on the county’s most intractable health problems.
“As we tackle urgent challenges in air quality, maternal and infant mortality, racial disparities in public health, food insecurity and more, I know these nine members will lead with distinction and I thank them for agreeing to serve,” Innamorato said in a press release.
The meeting was a kind of orientation for the new members, some of whom told PublicSource that they’re operating on a learning curve. As Health Department staffers briefed them, they raised questions that reflected concerns about the county’s health disparities and a desire to find out how effective the department’s programs are.
“We have decided that we’re not going to be a status quo board,” said Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, an OB-GYN and the senior vice president and chief clinical diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the Allegheny Health Network.
Who are the new board members?
During interviews with PublicSource, several board members described the expertise they’re bringing to the table, how they’ll channel that expertise into their oversight of the Health Department, and the issues they’ve dedicated their careers to.
I bring “a duality of perspective and expertise,” said Laura Dagley, who was a home health nurse before transitioning to advocacy work. “You see the health barriers that [people] are facing firsthand when you’re in somebody’s home.”
She’s now the medical and environmental health writer for Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, working on behalf of residents impacted by air pollution from fracking and other environmental health hazards.
“Those are the voices and concerns that I want to make sure are uplifted and heard,” said Dagley, who hopes her tenure on the board “will help bridge that gap” between people affected by public health issues and those at the Health Department who are working on solutions.
Two of the new board members are reproductive justice experts, which could be an asset to the county’s efforts to curb its high Black maternal mortality rate. Black birthers here are two and a half times more likely to experience maternal death than their white counterparts, according to Health Department data. And a 2019 study by the City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Coalition found that Black women in most similar cities live longer than their counterparts in Pittsburgh.
Dara Méndez’s research shows that experiencing racism and sexism in everyday life is associated with poor maternal health outcomes. She told PublicSource last year that fighting those forces in communities — not just hospitals or doctor’s offices — could help narrow health disparities between Black and white people.
Méndez is an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in maternal and child health. While serving on the board, she’ll “ensure” that people who “have been historically and contemporarily excluded … are centered in our decision making and processes,” she said during an interview this week.
Larkins-Pettigrew, the AHN OB-GYN, said she wants to “use [her] talent and expertise to really govern through a social justice lens.”
At the meeting, she asked a department staffer to provide more granular data — “slices of the vulnerable population” — to help the board better understand health disparities.
“Our mothers and their babies are dying [of] preventable causes, and that is unacceptable,” Larkins-Pettigrew told PublicSource. “Those numbers should be zero,” she added, noting that “structural racism and structural bias is a big part of that.”
Another doctor who joined the board has spent 14 years providing low-barrier care to the county’s most vulnerable community members. Elizabeth Cuevas is an internal medicine doctor who helped launch AHN’s Center for Inclusion Health, which serves those battling addiction, experiencing homelessness and others who can’t pay for care.
New members of the Allegheny County Board of Health
- Elizabeth Cuevas, an internal medicine doctor and division chief of Allegheny Health Network’s [AHN] Center for Inclusion Health, which provides low-barrier health care to vulnerable people
- Laura Dagley, a registered nurse and the medical and environmental health writer for Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania
- Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, an OB-GYN and the senior vice president and chief clinical diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the Allegheny Health Network. She’s also the academic chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Drexel University.
- Dara Méndez, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh and associate director of its Center for Health Equity. She’s also a founder of the Black Equity Coalition.
- Khlood Salman, a registered nurse and associate professor at the Duquesne University School of Nursing
- Lisa Scales, president and CEO of Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and chair of Feeding Pennsylvania
- Graham Snyder, an infectious disease doctor and medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at UPMC. He’s also an associate professor at Pitt’s School of Medicine.
- Michael Yonas, vice president for community partnerships and learning at the Pittsburgh Foundation and an adjunct faculty member at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health. He’s also an emergency medical technician.
“I’m now understanding all the various social issues that come in play with why people can’t seek help,” said Cuevas, who is the center’s division chief, listing transportation barriers, lack of identification and other factors. “I think I could bring that to the board when they’re talking about things like Hepatitis C screening and treatment, or [tuberculosis] and [sexually transmitted infection] screening and treatment … and potentially have some impact in how the Health Department takes care of those individuals.”
One new member is bringing deep knowledge of food insecurity in the region to the board. Demand for food assistance in Pennsylvania reached an all-time high last year, which put a strain on local food pantries. Experts said the high cost of groceries and the end of pandemic-era food benefits, among other forces, is driving that demand.
“My focus is on ensuring that everyone in Allegheny County has consistent access to nutritious food, and that’s paramount for me,” said Lisa Scales, the president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which supplies food pantries throughout the county. Her understanding of food safety protocols could also aid the board’s oversight of the Health Department’s inspections of food operations.
The other new members are: Khlood Salman, a registered nurse, associate professor at the Duquesne University School of Nursing and an expert in the health care needs of immigrants and refugees; Graham Snyder, an infectious disease doctor and medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at UPMC; and Michael Yonas, vice president for community partnerships and learning at The Pittsburgh Foundation*.
Portlock, now the only longtime member of the board, said she’ll provide “continuity” and “historical knowledge” as the new board begins its work. She was elected chair of the board and Cuevas was elected vice chair during the meeting.
‘Very optimistic’ for greater transparency
Advocates have long criticized the Health Department for what they said was a lack of transparency around its policies and enforcement of regulations.
Angelo Taranto and Karen Grzywinski are co-founders of Allegheny County Clean Air Now, which works with the indoor air quality advocacy group ROCIS and Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab to monitor emissions from the county’s industrial polluters. They said they repeatedly tried to share data with the Health Department and express their concerns over emissions violations over the last few years, but felt it wasn’t receptive to their feedback.
“We are kind of their eyes and ears [because] their health inspectors can’t be around all the time,” said Taranto, of Ross Township, whose late wife suffered from asthma, which he believes was made worse by air pollution. Under Vann’s leadership and with the new board in place, “we’re very optimistic that there will be more openness to working with us and taking advantage of the tools we have.”
At least one new board member would like to see more transparency from the department.
“One thing [the Health Department] needs to prioritize is putting themselves out there more and being proactive in their communication,” said Dagley, the environmental health writer. “People are feeling … left out of the loop and I don’t think that was always intentional.”
During the meeting, she raised the issue of communication with Geoff Rabinowitz, the department’s deputy director for environmental health.
“What [do] those complaints look like?” she asked, before requesting to see the department’s responses to complaints about emissions it receives from the public.
Rabinowitz said he would provide her with a sample of those responses. Dagley said the department received more than 1,300 complaints last year.
Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on Bluesky @venuri.bsky.social.
This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.
This story was fact-checked by Bella Markovitz.
*The Pittsburgh Foundation provides funding to PublicSource.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
