PROVIDENCE – This week, on Thursday evening, Nov. 4, the R.I Public Health Association will hold its 25th annual meeting, honoring five deserving practitioners, recognizing their perseverance on the front lines during a time of pandemic and disruption.

Two of the five award-winners, Dr. Beata Nelken, MD, a pediatrician who set up her solo practice on Broad Street in Central Falls, and Amy Nunn, Sc.D. executive director of the R.I. Public Health Institute, which launched Open Door Health in 2020, the state’s first LGBTQ clinic, have been featured prominently in ConvergenceRI during the past five years.

Nelken and Nunn will joined on the awards podium by Dr. Brandon Marshall, Ph.D., an associate professor of Epidemiology at Brown, winner of the 2021 Public Health Champion Award; by Maureen Maigret, RN, BS, MPA, winner of the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award, and by Dr. John Fulton, Ph.D., winner of the 2021 John Fogarty Award, for his research on cancer risks and cancer control interventions, especially women’s cancer screening programs.

The awards come at a time when there is a growing awareness of the connective tissue between public health and future economic prosperity in Rhode Island, as the state attempts to rebound from the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Answering a need
Here is an in-depth look at the work, first of Nelken and then of Nunn, based upon previous coverage by ConvergenceRI.

As ConvergenceRI reported: When Dr. Beata Nelken, a pediatrician, first opened her practice, Jenks Park Pediatrics, six months ago, in February of 2020, on Broad Street, the major thoroughfare in Rhode Island’s smallest city, she knew it was going to be an adventure as a solo practitioner.

But Nelken never imagined that she would find herself in midst of a global pandemic, serving as the principal source of testing for under-served children as the coronavirus swept through the community.

Her goal in setting up shop had been straightforward: “I was answering a need, going to where there was a great need, bringing the greatest skills I had to meet it,” she said. “I wanted to better serve the families of Central Falls, with its large uninsured population, where language is often a barrier to better health outcomes.”

Nelken offers free medical care to uninsured children from the community.
 Nelken, who speaks Spanish, said that she had been serving the Latinx communities in Rhode Island for 19 years, since 2001, when she began her pediatric residency at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. She most recently worked for Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, including running the Central Falls High School health clinic for a number of years.


In November of 2019, Nelken was recognized by Rhode Island Kids Count as a community hero for her successful efforts to reduce teenage pregnancy in Central Falls by 55 percent over three years. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “Why Central Falls is changing the health care landscape.”]


A true hero
More recently, in March of 2021, Nelken was presented with a key to the city by Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera. As ConvergenceRI reported: It was a small, intimate gathering, held on the evening of Thursday, March 11, with a very limited attendance, given COVID-19 restrictions.

But the event recognized a huge moment: the awarding of the key to the city to Dr. Beata Nelken by Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera, honoring the pediatrician as a local community health care hero.

Dr. Ashish Jha and Dr. Megan Ranney may get most of the attention from national and local news media, but in Central Falls, Dr. Nelken is recognized as a true hero, who has been on the front lines battling COVID.

The ceremony was part of celebration marking International Women’s Day in 2021 and Woman’s History Month. It also featured the unveiling of the first Central Falls Women’s Hall of Fame as a new display at City Hall.

The first three women honored were Viola Davis, a Central Falls native; the late Sandra Moreau, the city’s first councilwoman; and Mayor Rivera, the city’s first woman mayor and Rhode Island’s first Latina mayor.


“I know this is only the beginning for many more women, particularly women of color, rising to important roles and making a difference throughout the community and beyond. I hope we continue to challenge what’s possible together,” Mayor Rivera said.

Nelken was honored for her work [often unsung outside of Central Falls], having opened up a private pediatric practice in Central Falls a year ago, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit Rhode Island. 


In response, Nelken quickly pivoted the focus of her practice, becoming a hub, a lifeline for testing and vaccinating members of the hard-hit, densely populated city. “You are truly a hero in our community,” Rivera said. “I don’t just speak for myself. Our community is blessed.”

[See links below to ConvergenceRI stories, “A pediatrician takes on COVID in Central Falls,” and “Why Central Falls is changing the health care landscape.”]


A public health start-up
For Dr. Amy Nunn, Sc.D., her work as executive director of the R.I. Public Health Institute continues to push at and break down the silos around the delivery of health care to communities with the greatest unmet needs. Most recently, Nunn led efforts earlier this year to create a tax on sugary drinks in Rhode Island as a way to improve the health and nutrition of children.

As ConvergenceRI had reported: The new digs for the Rhode Island Public Health Institute at 383 West Fountain St. are emblematic of the growth achieved by the start-up organization as it moves forward with its ambitious strategic plan over the next five years on public health initiatives that seek “to bridge and respond to social, structural and clinical determinants of health.”

These include public health issues that often reside on the outskirts of public conversation and political consciousness: to help eradicate HIV transmission in Rhode Island, to promote widespread Hepatitis C diagnosis and cure, to reduce food insecurity among children and older adults, and to reduce the burden of chronic diseases.

To accomplish these goals, the Rhode Island Public Health Institute brings to the table a strong emphasis on research, data and analytics to measure the results and produce evidence-based findings.

One of the signature efforts of the R.I. Public Institute has been the creation of a mobile market offering fresh fruits and vegetables, Food on the Move.

As ConvergenceRI had reported: On Thursday afternoon, June 1, Food on the Move, an initiative of the R.I. Public Health Institute, held an event at the Dominica Manor, a Providence Housing Authority residential site at 100 Atwells Ave., to showcase the expansion of their efforts to address food insecurity among seniors in Rhode Island.

Unlike the explosive growth in food truck culture, which will be on display during the PVD Fest on Saturday, June 4, featuring more than 20 food trucks from noon to midnight, the Food on the Move program is a mobile market, trucking in fresh fruits and vegetables to numerous sites across Rhode Island, allowing residents to shop in place where they live.

For those shoppers that qualify, Food on the Move doubles the value of SNAP benefits. Food on the Move has now become the largest such program in the nation, and it is on the verge of being replicated in other cities and localities.

For the residents of Dominica Manor, the mobile market is more than just convenience. The residents live in what might be termed a veritable Rhode Island sandwich of both a food desert and a food swamp. There is the food swamp that is Federal Hill, and the food desert that is the lack of a grocery store in easy walking or even driving distance.

The expansion of the Food on the Move is being underwritten in large part by funding from the AARP Foundation; representatives were on hand for the occasion.

The brief presentation was contemporaneously translated into Spanish for the benefit of many of the 50 or so residents attending, ready to shop. A cooking demonstration was also conducted, featuring a pasta primavera made with ingredients from the mobile market.

Amy Nunn, the executive director of the R.I. Public Health Institute, explained the strategic context for the Food on the Move initiative, in an interview with ConvergenceRI following the event.

“We are already working with all of the health equity zones of the R.I. Department of Health,” Nunn said. “We anticipate that those programs will continue in coming years.”

With the support of the AARP Foundation, Nunn continued, “We are doubling down on our efforts to serve the elderly, for two specific reasons. First, food insecurity is highly prevalent among older adults over age 55. Approximately 14 percent of older adults are food insecure in Rhode Island at any given time.”

Secondly, Nunn explained, “We know that this intervention is particularly high impact for older adults. We are therefore focusing increasingly more efforts on reaching older adults, as well as children,” the other population for whom this intervention has been particularly important.

Food on the Move, an initiative of the Rhode Island Public Health Institute, began in 2012 as an effort to increase the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables as a public health clinical research trial supported by NIH. The effort now serves more than 5,000 customers annually at some 35 “mobile markets” each month. A potential expansion is under consideration, depending upon the potential to secure additional resources.

Open Door: The name says it all
Another signature program launched by the R.I. Public Health Institute is the Open Door Health, the state’s first LGBTQ health clinic, which opened its doors in March of 2020.

As ConvergenceRI had reported: On late Friday afternoon, workers were busy putting the final touches on hanging a new sign on the wall in the main waiting room of Open Door Health, a circular sign where the bright metallic circles of colors – blue, red, orange, purple, yellow and green – flow into each other, the brightness of the sign matching the openness of the interior of the new health clinic and the promise inherent in the new enterprise.

Meanwhile, outside, members of the staff were busy collecting windblown trash from the nearby Dunkin Donuts dumpster, getting the front of the building spruced up for the grand opening on Monday, March 2.

The new storefront health clinic, Open Door Health, tucked behind the busy street scene on Broad Street, is Rhode Island’s first health clinic dedicated to serving the LGBTQ community, developed by the R.I. Public Health Institute. The messaging behind the clinic articulates the vision: “We help you to be you.”

The openness of the décor is matched by the openness of the clinic’s approach to providing primary health care services and express testing and screening for HIV, sexually transmitted infections and Hepatitis C.

Chan, the medical director, explained that one of the biggest gaps in Rhode Island in general is access to primary care. “That’s amplified if you are a member of the LGBTQ community, because there is just such limited access to care – certainly care that is done in a culturally competent, accepting, welcoming manner.”

The future is now
In the coming weeks, there will be renewed focus on investments in public health – including the potential for a new public health laboratory to be built on the former I-195 land.

In addition, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, in collaboration with the Brown School of Public Health, will present the results of the third annual RI Life Index on Monday, Nov. 8, which will detail Rhode Islanders’ perception of the health and well being in the state.

And, as reported in this week’s edition of ConvergenceRI, a Senate Commission will be examining the 15-year history of the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Serivces to look at how effective the consolidated structure has been in achieving its original mission. [See “To have and have not.”] Stay tuned.