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Youngstown Health Commissioner Neil Altman to retire
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Neil Altman
YOUNGSTOWN
Neil H. Altman plans to retire as commissioner of the Youngstown City Health District effective May 1.
In a letter to the health board, Altman, who has been on sick leave for eight months, said it is “in the best interests of the health district, the board and staff for me to say goodbye.”
The board is expected to act on Altman’s retirement at its meeting scheduled for Tuesday, said Lillian Cunningham, Altman’s executive assistant.
He described the letter as the “most difficult one I have ever had to write,” during his 30 years as Youngstown’s health commissioner, a position “I have been proud and honored to hold.”
He said he would submit the proper forms to the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and anticipates his retirement will be effective May 1.
Altman wrote he had hoped he would have recovered and been physically well and strong enough to resume his duties as health commissioner and “serve the community and the board until I was too old to function. At this moment, neither is the case.”
During his 30-year tenure, Altman said the department has grown from two grants into an active, goal-oriented and professional organization securing many grants bringing millions of new dollars into the city and developing new programs, such as litter control and recycling, HIV/AIDS, homeless health, lead-inspection enforcement and prosecution, while other programs have expanded.
Altman was named 2010 Champion of Public Health in the Public Health Practitioner category by Ohio State University College of Public Health in recognition of the impact that individuals and groups have made on the health of Ohioans.
Altman, 63, received a bachelor’s degree from Temple University in 1972 and a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina in 1977. He and his wife, Denise Sandra Wilderman, have a son, Max.
Altman directs a number of projects that impact the health of city residents, including the health department’s arthritis program, the Infant Immunization Action Plan Grant Program, the Hepatitis Immunization Grant Program and the AIDS Prevention Grant Program. He is president of the Mahoning County Area Task Force on AIDS.