As a native of the community she serves, Nicole Anjeski has a deep commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of the people of Cortland County in New York. Anjeski will be celebrating her 13-year work anniversary with Cortland County Health Department later this year.

“This is my community. I’ve grown up here,” said Anjeski. “This community is a great community to serve.”

She describes Cortland County as rural with a population of around 46,000, with one city housing 80% of the population.

Her past titles include Public Health Educator, Public Health Programs Manager, and Deputy Health Director where she went from outreach to becoming an accreditation coordinator.

She stepped into her role as accreditation coordinator through the previous Public Health Director who felt Anjeski’s experiences would help her handle the work that went into getting accredited.

Although she had the official role of accreditation coordinator, it was not her official job title. At the time, Anjeski was a Public Health Programs Manager and then the Deputy Public Health Director. She admits that it was challenging not to 100% commit to the accreditation process, but she’s thankful to have done it.

“I would say that this experience helped me to understand all aspects of the department, what each division did, and to get to know and understand the staff more. I also was able to organize the staff in a way that everyone was able to participate and with that made us work as a team better, instead of only in our independent division silos,” said Anjeski.

Anjeski said the Public Health Accreditation Board’s accreditation process helped her staff coordinate effectively during the pandemic.

“In order to complete accreditation, we had to be all on the same page and working collaboratively together, while supporting the process,” she said. “During the pandemic we did the same things. We worked together, supported each other, and used the skills acquired during our accreditation journey.”

She believes that accreditation helped her understand who she would be as leader, which she later incorporated in her current leadership.

Since 2021, Anjeski has been Public Health Director where she focuses on building and retaining partnerships to collaborate with agencies throughout the county.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic when Anjeski was promoted to her current role as Public Health Director. At that time, she believed the world began to understand the importance of public health. However, she thinks that public health has been pushed aside, and would like to see more funding for her department to expand their programming, including adding an opioid program.

“Public health is preventing health disparities [and] health issues for the future,” she said.

She understands that health departments are facing a lack of trust from the community, which has pushed society to run to social media for health concerns. She hopes through effective communication from public health professionals that the public’s trust can be rebuilt.

“Look at us as the public health experts,” Anjeski said. “It’s our job to prove health departments are important.”