Letter: Amaral offers abundant experience for Westport Board of Health

Posted 6/17/20

To the editor:

As the town election on June 23 draws near, I feel it necessary to respond to my opponent’s statement that I am not experienced and therefore I should not be elected to serve …

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Letter: Amaral offers abundant experience for Westport Board of Health

Posted

To the editor:

As the town election on June 23 draws near, I feel it necessary to respond to my opponent’s statement that I am not experienced and therefore I should not be elected to serve on the Board of Health.

He is right about only one thing. I have never served on a Board of Health. But to say I am not experienced is incorrect.

Experience to lead comes in many forms. Working as a nurse for over 40 years is experience enough to lead on a Board of Health. I have also held leadership roles in several clinical practice settings and have won awards for my work. I was a clinical director of a program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

I have served on several boards. I was the vice-president and then president of the board of a large condominium association. For eight years I served as an associate board member at Gould Farm, a residential treatment facility and working farm in Monterey Massachusetts. I am currently on the advisory board at Allens’ Pond Wildlife Sanctuary in Westport. I was elected as a write-in candidate and served one term as chair of Commissioner of Trust Funds in Westport.

My experience includes hiring and evaluating competent individuals to carry out the goals of the organization, restructuring programing and developing policies and procedures that directly impact the health and safety of others, managing budgets and allocation of funds, understanding complicated systems ( the human body for one), and all the problems - I prefer to call them challenges - that would come before me as a health professional, and in any of my other leadership roles including what would come before me on the Board of Health.

Some of the most important qualities of good leadership include integrity, accountability, empathy, humility, resilience, vision, good communication skills, and positivity. As a recipient of an award as a “Person of Mission” at Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, these qualities are inherent its description, and in me.

If elected I will bring a new dimension to the Board of Health and strengthen its ability to Promote a Healthy Community, which is one of the board’s responsibilities. My initiatives and goals as a member of the BOH can be seen on Public Access TV on the Town of Westport official website or on my Facebook page, Donna Amaral RN for Board of Health. There are also other Vimeos and information on this page. I ask for your vote on June 23.

Donna Amaral RN, MSN, PMHCNS-BC

Westport

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