Who Are We?
MetroWest Shared Public Health Services (MWSPHS) was established in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic through funding from the state's Public Health Excellence grant program. This grant allows for increased investment in local public health and aims to enhance capacity in the local public health infrastructure across Massachusetts.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated many challenges in local health departments across Massachusetts, highlighting staffing and resource challenges that most Massachusetts local public health departments experience revealing the impact of under-investment and evolving community health risks. The idea of regionalizing and sharing services ultimately allows for more capacity to provide high-quality programs and services to more municipalities.
Shared service collaborations strengthen existing core public health services as well as fill gaps in essential services. These collaborations increase staff capacity and expertise, assist in attracting additional funding, and enhance delivery of better health protections, programs and outcomes.
MWSPHS consists of nine municipalities: Ashland, Framingham, Hopkinton, Hudson, Maynard, Medway, Milford, Millis and Natick.
Looking To The Future
The Strategic Plan provides a structure for what the group sees possible as it moves forward. At the base of the structure is the group’s mission, which describes the MWSPHS’s purpose and what the group does. The top of the structure is the vision, which describes the group’s aspiration for community and for conditions that will change through the work of MWSPHS. The pillars holding up the structure are the strategic priorities (and associated actions) – as these pillars are built, they make the vision possible and, ideally, the base to build off of in future efforts.
Mission:
To ensure sustainable public health services that promote, protect, and enhance the health, safety, and wellbeing of all people who live and work in the member communities across the MetroWest Shared Public Health Services region.
Vision:
Through regional collaboration and shared investments, the MetroWest Shared Public Health Service group delivers foundational public health services as well as implements innovative solutions that foster independence, improve health, and promote well-being for all live and work in the participating communities.