Andrea Boissevain, MPH

Andrea L. Boissevain, MPH has served as the Director of Health for Town of Stratford since 2010. She has more than 25 years of multi-agency experience in addressing public health issues, evaluating human health risks and communicating the associated complexities to a wide variety of audiences. Prior to joining the local health department, Ms. Boissevain served as the department’s technical advisor for nearly 13 years on myriad issues pertaining to the federal Raymark Superfund clean-up project. She provided crisis management planning and execution in the early phases of project, reviewed technical documents and drafted comments on behalf of the health department. She also instituted communication and outreach strategies to residents regarding the project’s progress and its impact on public health.

An advocate of involving the residents in addressing and solving communication issues, Ms. Boissevain orchestrated a series of neighborhood forums over several years to address neighborhood-specific concerns as the cleanup progressed. Known to take decades to clean up, the Raymark Superfund site is still active with the latest phase of remediation work where Ms. Boissevain is working with colleagues from federal and state health and environmental agencies with the fourth “generation” of stakeholder groups.

Leading a nationally accredited local health department (only the third to be accredited in CT), Ms. Boissevain is responsible for leading the development and implementation of mission, vision and strategic objectives of ensuring that the 10 Essential Services of Public Health are carried out. Local public health ranges from enforcing local and state regulations, preparing for and responding to public health emergencies, addressing health disparities, investigating foodborne illness outbreaks and linking residents to needed care or resources--all of that and more are part of part and parcel of Ms. Boissevain's work in Stratford.

In other community engagement work, Ms. Boissevain is also an active member of Primary Care Action Group, a coalition consisting of two local hospitals, two federally qualified health centers and six area local health departments dedicated to championing health improvement in Greater Bridgeport area. She also serves as co-chair of the steering committee of Get Healthy CT, one of the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) work groups that focuses on eliminating obesity, a health priority for Stratford as well as the region.