Poland resident is new health commissioner

Staf freport

YOUNGSTOWN

The new commissioner of the Mahoning County District Board of Health comes from Poland.

The health board appointed Patricia M. Sweeney to the job Thursday.

She will assume her position May 1 and will begin serving in March as deputy health commissioner to retiring health commissioner Matthew Stefanak.

She is the 10th person — and the first woman — to serve as health commissioner since the health district was created in 1919.

Sweeney, 55, a registered nurse, was selected from among 11 candidates who met the educational (master’s degree in public health) and senior management experience (five years) requirements for the job and who responded to a call for applicants published in state and national public-health professional journals and in The Vindicator, Stefanak said.

A screening committee composed of retired health commissioners and physicians, township officials and other stakeholders recommended five candidates for interviews by health- board members, health- district management and staff and leaders of other local community organizations.

Her starting hourly rate will be $45.67.

“She will devote 90 percent of her time to the board of health and will continue to spend 10 percent of her time in research and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh,” Stefanak added.

Sweeney serves as associate director for law and policy at the Center for Public Health Practice and is an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.

She teaches health and public-health law and ethics courses and serves as the director of the school’s juris doctorate/master of public health dual-degree program.

Sweeney is a lead investigator in the University of Pittsburgh Centers for Disease Control & Prevention-funded Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center, analyzing the impact of law and ethics upon public-health systems’ capacity to prepare for and respond to emergencies with public-health implications.

In collaboration with the CDC Public Health Law Program and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Sweeney also is conducting a program that is providing public-health science and public-health law training for state-court judges nationwide.

Sweeney has had senior management positions in the home care, hospice and community-health fields, health-board officials added.

Sweeney’s past and present participation in national boards and advisory panels includes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored Public Health Practice Based Research Network National Advisory Group, The Pfizer Medical Professional Academic Partnerships National Advisory Board.

Locally, she serves as a member of the Mahoning County High School Board of Education and as a trustee of the William Swanston Charitable Fund and the William Swanston Children’s Home.

Sweeney, a lifelong county resident, lives in Poland with her husband, Douglas Sweeney, owner-operator of Sweeney Chevrolet in Boardman.

They have three daughters and two grand- children.