New Health Chief Named

A Fair Haven native is coming home to take command of the city’s embattled health department.

The Board of Public Health Commissioners voted Wednesday night to approve the Fair Haven native, Martiza Bond, as the city’s next public health director.

Bond has led Bridgeport’s public health department for the past three years.

The health commission, not the legislative Board of Alders, has the final say over who will lead the city’s Health Department. Now that the board has selected Bond, she will begin her new role before the end of the month.

“I’m ecstatic that she has agreed to take this position,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent.

“Her expertise and background will be very helpful” in guiding the city’s public health response to everything from substance use disorders to the child lead paint poisoning.

Bond served for 10 years as the executive director of the Eastern Connecticut Area Health Education Center before she stepped into the job as Bridgeport’s top public health official.

Her LinkedIn page says that she also has a B.S. in public health from Southern Connecticut State University, a management degree from Albertus Magnus College, and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Connecticut Health Center.

She worked as a community health outreach worker for the Naugatuck Valley Health district after college. This 2013 article in a publication called Hispanic Executive credited Bond for ​“recruiting minority and nontraditional students into the burgeoning health-care field — and developing groundbreaking programs in the process.”

A bio sent out by city spokesperson Gage Frank Thursday says that, as the public health director for Bridgeport, Bond led 11 ​“diverse regulatory divisions and social services programs yielding proven results, including, but not limited to, increased revenue and efficiency. Director Bond also launched the Public Health Accreditation process within her first year of appointment.”

Frank said Bond has worked in the public health sector for over 18 years in both urban and rural settings.

Bond told the Independent Thursday that, when she saw the job opening in her native city, she pounced. ​“It was a chance to be able to come home,” she said.

She said her first priority upon taking office will be to conduct assessments of every division of the Health Department to make sure that they are all meeting the highest standard of promoting public health, preventing disease, and protecting residents.

Bond said she has been closely following the lead poisoning lawsuits and public criticism the Health Department has faced again and again and again in recent years, particularly after the city decided in November 2018 to stop enforcing local lead poisoning laws and send out inspectors only for children who met a higher state threshold for lead poisoning.

She did not commit to any specific policy or protocol around lead inspections until she has formally taken office and reviewed how the department is currently working. She did say that ​“any blood lead level is a dangerous blood lead level.”

“This is going to be a multi-sector approach,” she said about combating child lead poisoning in the city. It will involve city lead inspectors, pediatricians, parents, landlords, and other public health experts.

During his successful mayoral campaign, Elicker foregrounded his own criticism of how the prior administration handled child lead poisoning cases.

The Health Department has been led for the past half year by Acting Health Director Roslyn Hamilton. Hamilton in turn replaced former Health Director Byron Kennedy, who resigned last June to take a job as the state prison system’s top doctor.