Philly’s new health commissioner wants to improve health-care access in Northeast Philly and combat the opioid crisis

Palak Raval-Nelson is two months into her new position as Philadelphia’s health commissioner — but the Temple University alumna has spent decades inside the city health department, starting out as a health inspector in Kensington, where she monitored food safety from bodega shelves to restaurant kitchens.

Raval-Nelson was the first woman of color to be director of the department’s Division of Environmental Health Services and served as a deputy health commissioner before being appointed to head the department in December.

Now, she is working to set priorities for the department while juggling a series of high-profile events with implications for Philadelphians’ health, from the aftermath of a plane crash in the Northeast and a factory fire in Abington to President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to health research funding.

» READ MORE: City leaders tout progress in Kensington, but some residents remain skeptical

Raval-Nelson spoke with The Inquirer about her first weeks on the job and her goals as health commissioner. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for space.

One of the main priorities right now is that Northeast Philadelphia is a health-care desert. We worked last year to get the zoning through to build two new health centers there. It’s a priority to work collaboratively with all of the city departments that we need to get those agreements in place so that we can start building. If we want Philadelphians that thrive, [adults] can’t wait a year for a doctor’s appointment. We can’t make kids wait if they need immunizations.

And economic opportunity for all is key. If people have enough food and enough money to not have to decide between paying an electric bill and having food on the table, that’s a game changer. We can then start talking to them about other habits that lead to wellness.

We’re supporting the work at the Riverview Wellness Village, and having our Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction team continue their work in Kensington on combating the opioid crisis. At the beginning of the year, we worked collaboratively on warming centers, to make sure that all Philadelphians that are unhoused have a place to go in every single [city] district when we’re in a Code Blue, [the city’s designation for dangerously low temperatures].

We have more Black and Hispanic men who [are not used to taking] opioids dying from overdoses. We’re expanding our work into other areas of North and Southwest Philly, as well as education and outreach — just working to inform folks.

» READ MORE: Overdoses are spiking in North Philly. Here’s how help is finding communities left out of the opioid crisis response.

We’re keeping an eye on the numbers. Our harm-reduction division is still doing the good work that we have been doing in Kensington, in support of the Wellness Village and other activities [to combat overdoses and addiction]. Under the mayor’s administration, everybody’s working on philanthropy as a way to help augment some of the shifts in funding.

We want to create a continuum of environmentally safe spaces — whether that’s the home environment, the school environment, the day-care environment, or making sure that kids have access to proper nutrition and physical activity. That touches on working with our academic partners, our hospitals, institutions, pediatrician offices, as well as our own health centers, to monitor data and provide lead hazard remediation, asthma interventions, and all of those things.

But it’s also about looking at the other social determinants of health, some of which are associated with the housing environment and housing insecurity, and how we can work to improve that — whether that’s a corner store offering better food choices, or the ability to have a safe enough sidewalk to walk to school, or a park that has lights and play equipment.

I’m just committed to keeping our health department as steady as possible.

The mayor’s office, the budget office, the law department — they’re all working collaboratively and collectively to address any potential issues.

We did start collecting information and materials that we would need. For instance, in our division of HIV health, most of the folks that are experts there have been working in this field for at least a decade or more. They already have a bulk of the information that would otherwise be purged. So we’re working to put together our documents [so] we have access to the things that are purged.

And we’re reaching out, as we need information, to our grant experts and counterparts [at state health agencies].