Assistant Commissioner of Brooklyn Neighborhood Health

Job Description

The Center for Health Equity & Community Wellness (CHECW) seeks to eliminate racial and other inequities resulting in premature mortality. With an unwavering grounding in history and structural analysis, CHECW works to increase visibility of the harm perpetuated by centuries of racist, socially unjust policy while pushing towards redress for the most impacted NYC communities. CHECW addresses inequity across community and healthcare systems in partnership with community, faith-based, and health care organizations. CHECW’s work focuses on social determinants of health, including environmental and commercial determinants, and addresses both upstream and downstream factors to improve health and well-being of New Yorkers. CHECW is comprised of the Bureau of Bronx Neighborhood Health, the Bureau of Brooklyn Neighborhood Health, the Bureau of Harlem Neighborhood Health, the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention, the Bureau of Health Equity Capacity Building, the Bureau of Equitable Health Systems and the Bureau of Finance, Administration, and Services. The division’s Deputy Commissioner also serves as the Agency’s Chief Equity Officer and oversees Race to Justice, the Agency’s internal reform effort to help our staff learn what they can do to better address racial health gaps and improve health outcomes for all New Yorkers. CHECW sits under the Agency’s Chief Medical Officer.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

NYCDOHMH is seeking an exceptional candidate to lead the Bureau of Brooklyn Neighborhood Health. This bureau supports programming, planning, and recovery work to address racial and other social inequities resulting in premature mortality for neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to histories of systemic and structural inequities driven by racism and oppression. Reporting to the Deputy Commissioner, the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Brooklyn Neighborhood Health will be responsible for playing a major leadership role in overseeing and managing the successful development, implementation, and evaluation of community-level and systems-level strategies in North and Central Brooklyn that aim to address health inequities. This role will support alignment of evidence-based and community-informed strategies with deepening of community relationships and application of the Agency’s Community Engagement Framework to address inequities, including those exacerbated by COVID-19, in priority neighborhoods. The Assistant Commissioner will also be responsible for operationalizing actions following the NYCDOHMH declaration of racism as a public health crisis and applying anti-racist frameworks to programming and policy.

Duties include but are not limited to the following:

- Supporting the overall vision, values and mission of the agency; provide leadership support for the agency’s key strategic areas.

- Providing oversight of planning, program development, research, evaluation and reporting for bureau activities including initiatives to expand and strengthen existing programs and develop new program; oversight of the Brownsville Action Center and locations in Bed-Stuy and Bushwick; and alignment of the bureau’s work with Agency and division priorities.

- Creating strategies to strengthen collaboration and partnership between the community and clinical settings to reinforce health, with a specific focus on marginalized populations.

- Operationalizing actions following DOHMH’s declaration of racism as a public health crisis and applying anti-racist frameworks to programming and policy.

- Managing the operations of the Bureau, including direct and indirect oversight of more than 55 staff members (plus interns and volunteers), and providing clinical, scientific, and epidemiological guidance to staff while fostering staff skills in application of anti-racist approaches to public health.

- Partnering closely with other bureaus within CHECW and other agency divisions to increase neighborhood investments by using data-driven strategy, program optimization and augmenting current available services.

- Representing CHECW, the Bureau, and the Agency, as needed, in internal and external meetings, committees, and events, including through presentations to the public.

- Serving in an emergency activation role in the agency’s Incident Command System and support other emergency operations as needed.

In the event of a public health emergency as deemed by the agency (public health outbreak, natural disaster, etc.), employees may be mandated to assume an emergency response role. In these rare instances and when notified, staff will be re-assigned from their regular day-to-day duties as noted in this job description to take on another role considered necessary by the agency. When this occurs, all staff are required to comply with the change in assignment and must be prepared to be called