Staff Spotlight: Maurice “Moe” Melchiono, RN, MS — Assistant Public Health Nurse
“I’ll be traveling to Africa and wondering what travel vaccines I need?” “I’m worried about the Chikungunya virus outbreak in Brazil — do I need to get any vaccines?” “We left our country with no immunization records for my 5-year-old son — what does he need to start school?” “How do I keep myself safe while in Tanzania?”
These are some of the questions that Maurice “Moe” Melchiono, RN, MS fields every day as one of Barnstable County’s assistant public health nurses. Along with providing travel medicine advice and immunizations, Moe and his two nursing colleagues offer immunizations for adults and children. Vaccines for children and teens are provided free of charge through the Department of Health’s Vaccines for Children program. Clinics are held twice a week in the historic Barnstable County Jail Building.
Moe also provides annual free training to municipal, lab, and facility departments to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements. OSHA is a federal agency under the Department of Labor, established in 1970 to ensure safe and healthful working conditions through standard-setting, enforcement, and training.
In addition to routine immunizations, Moe and the team organize annual flu and COVID clinics and participate in planning outreach events and health fairs across Barnstable County. He has provided COVID and Mpox contact tracing and serves as an internal resource for contact tracing questions. He also responds daily to calls from community members seeking guidance on healthcare resources, vaccine safety, and health misinformation circulating on social media.
Moe joined the County Health Department in 2020, just as COVID hit. Before that, he spent four decades at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he served as a Family Nurse Practitioner and Director of the Martha Eliot Community Health Center in Jamaica Plain — delivering health and social services to an underserved community. The transition to county public health aligns with his longstanding commitment to addressing health inequity and reaching the diverse populations across Cape Cod. He is glad to be part of a mission-driven team, working alongside colleagues who share that same dedication to the people of Cape Cod.
