New health agent ready for job
By Karen Mann

Elizabeth Swedberg

In her first two weeks as the town's health agent, Elizabeth "Libby" Swedberg says she is just starting to get her feet wet, but has jumped in with both feet.

"It has been very busy," said Swedberg, who started on September 11. She has already done two food inspections and multiple septic system inspections.

Swedberg comes to the position with five years of experience as the assistant health agent in Athol.

She believes that her background led her to this field, teaching and working in human services.

"Teaching and working with people, it just all came together," said Swedberg, adding that the assistant health agent job fit the things she was interested in and was available at the right time.

Swedberg received a lot of training in Athol, taking various classes the state offered. She said the state tries to get everyone on the same level and that officials in Athol were great about sending her to classes.

"You can't know everything, but you can know enough, and you can know where to go to get more information," she said.

She enjoys learning all kinds of different things, from beaver dam inspections, to restaurant inspections, to communicable disease investigations.

"You deal with a gamete of things," said Swedberg. "I like that every day is different."

According to Swedberg, the more difficult things to deal with are problems like sewage leaks. She had to go to a home where about six inches of sewage had leaked into the basement.

Another side of the spectrum for Swedberg, which she finds to be more interesting, is investigating the origin of communicable diseases in town.

Swedberg had an incident where a grandmother and grandson contracted salmonella poisoning. The family thought they had gotten the disease from eating at a restaurant. Swedberg worked with state officials and discovered the strain of salmonella poisoning the two had was that from an amphibian or reptile. The family had exotic toads as pets in their house, so Swedberg believes they caught it from the toads.

Swedberg is not sure what issues she will focus on in Westminster. She wants to find out what the health department has done in the past.

"I would like to see what the needs are in Westminster, because I am not familiar with the health needs of the town," she said.

The town's Board of Health has conducted a year-long search for a health agent after the departure of Mathew Moran.

Swedberg will be making $45,000 as a non-contractual, at-will employee of the town.

She hopes to get the Board of Health caught up on percolation tests in town - list that has been growing since the resignation of the assistant health agent in March despite efforts of the board of health members. This is the test to measure where a septic system should be built, and how big the tank should be.

According to Swedberg, board members told her that developing a bio-terrorism emergency plan would be one of her first duties. She said she will work with the fire and police department to develop this. She said that any emergency the town can be prepared for is a step in the right direction.

Education on health issues is one of the things she enjoys. She put together a program on skin cancer for children over the summer. However she said it was hard to do these programs, because they were understaffed in Athol.

She is excited to have this opportunity in Westminster. She said it seems like the board members are interested in doing more than just the basics, like inspections and permits.

Swedberg is familiar with the town and some of its employees because she was helping to do percolation tests in town while there was no health agent. She said it seems like a good community to work in, and everyone she talked to who works in

"I am looking forward to getting to know people, and I am excited to work with the town," said Swedberg.

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Karen Mann is a 2006 graduate of Emerson College, in Boston, where she studied journalism. She resides in Townsend with her parents.