Cape Cod Healthcare: It Takes a Team to Combat Communicable Diseases
On May 24, 2025, Provincetown health officials announced that they were working closely with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment to respond to a case of hepatitis A that was contracted by a food service worker at a local restaurant.
Over the winter, 26 cases of another highly contagious disease, pertussis, were reported in children in Barnstable County. Previous communicable diseases in our area have included varicella (chicken pox) and Mpox. Other communicable diseases on the rise include the tick-borne diseases babesiosis, anaplasmosis and alpha gal.
When these communicable diseases appear, a team of healthcare workers, and county and state health officials spring into action in a coordinated effort to keep the public safe.
“We’re very lucky here,” said Meg Payne, director of Public Health, Provider Relations & Telehealth at the Visiting Nurse Association of Cape Cod. “We’re on calls with the state. We’re on calls with other regions in Massachusetts. We have a really great working relationship and partnership with various entities in the community and we all come together. It’s a really strong public health response.”
Molly Ives, communicable disease investigator and health educator at the VNA, agrees.
“There’s a pretty great group of investigators on the Cape,” she said. “We meet monthly or twice a month to discuss what is going on and answer any questions. Lately, we’ve been talking about measles. We’ve been chatting with the infection preventionists at the hospital and meeting with them to talk about what would happen and how we could coordinate a measles outbreak.”
Currently all communicable diseases except enteric diseases (anything you can get from contaminated food or water) are investigated by Ives. Enteric diseases are handled by Lea Hamner, contract epidemiologist for Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment. Hamner and her team are a valuable resource for the VNA, and she helps them navigate between the state and local boards of health when an infectious disease occurs.
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