Derrick Neal speaks May 11, 2023, at a ceremony at Cambridge Cemetery marking the end of Covid as a public health emergency. (Photo: Cambridge Public Health Department via social media)

Cambridge’s chief public health officer, Derrick Neal, was removed from office Tuesday in a move confirmed by spokespeople for Cambridge health agencies.

Public Health will have an interim leader in Tracy Rose-Tynes, who retired last year as senior director of clinical services with the Cambridge Public Health Department and Cambridge Health Alliance. The Alliance runs the department. 

“Tracy, who served the Cambridge community for 32 years, has been an ambassador for public health and wellness in the city, and she brings a wealth of experience and proven leadership to this role,” said David Cecere, spokesperson for the Health Alliance. He said he was unable to comment on the reasons for Neal’s departure.

Rose-Tynes’ temporary return was confirmed by Dawn Baxter, senior director of communications and marketing for the Public Health Department, but Baxter wouldn’t comment further on personnel issues related to Neal.

Neal was dismissed by Dr. Assaad Sayah, chief executive of the Cambridge Health Alliance and the city’s commissioner of public health, based on findings of distrust and low morale from an investigation arising from a human-resources complaint, said a source familiar with the workings of the department.

The chair of the City Council’s Health & Environment Committee, Patty Nolan, said of Neal after the dismissal: “There were some questions when he was hired, and there were certainly concerns raised during his tenure. The department deserves an excellent manager, and I hope they get it.”

There were concerns about the quality of Neal’s work, Nolan said.

Neal spent a little over four years with the department. He was appointed during the Covid pandemic, arriving in December 2021 after Claude Jacob left the role the previous July. 

Jacob went to Texas; Neal came from there, having led the Williamson County and Cities Health District in Round Rock after working in Victoria County, the city of Abilene and Houston, according to a Health Alliance press release and a formal welcome by city councillor E. Denise Simmons. 

“Throughout his career, Mr. Neal has demonstrated exceptional leadership ability, community engagement and collaboration, and competency managing local, state and federal public health services and mandates in large public health departments,” Sayah said at the time. “He is extremely accomplished and enthusiastic.”

From Texas to Cambridge

The Williamson County job ended in 2021; Neal later filed a federal lawsuit saying he’d faced racial discrimination there, though that case was dismissed April 2. 

Employers in Williamson County held two closed-door meetings in 2021 about Neal’s complaints and claim for severance, and Neal left his phone behind each time to record what was said, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “The district’s lawyer found Neal’s phone recording the discussion last year under a pile of papers during one of the meetings,” the paper reported. 

After a guilty plea to two misdemeanor counts of attempting to disclose a recording of a closed meeting, Neal had to pay a $1,000 fine, the paper reported. 

The meetings were Sept. 1 and Oct. 13, 2021. When the phone was discovered, Neal was put on administrative leave immediately and resigned the next day, the paper reported.

Eight days later he was offered a job overseeing health services for California’s Sonoma County. Neal walked away from the offer within the week, later “citing concerns about the treatment of department heads of color,” according to The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa.

Arriving during Covid

Neal was hired by Cambridge in November 2021 and began work that December, speaking with appreciation for the city’s approach to Covid health. “One of the things that we had a really difficult time doing in Texas is convincing a lot of our leaders that it’s going to take all of us to get past this pandemic,” Neal told  councillors.

“CPHD’s work is typically more behind the scenes. Our goal is to prevent the negative conditions that can lead to poor health outcomes,” Neal said in a department message posted upon his arrival. “We recognize that systemic racism and other structural barriers are often impediments to the health and well-being of people of color, people with low incomes, immigrants, those with limited English fluency, LGBTQ+ members of our community and others who may be marginalized. Our programming is designed to shine a light on health inequities and do whatever we can do to address them.”

The Cambridge Public Health Department is budgeted at $9 million annually, with a staff of 57, for the current fiscal year. 

In a previous budget cycle, Nolan questioned the propriety of having the Health Alliance run a municipal public health department. “It still seems to make sense for us to consider,” Nolan said. “Given there will be a change in leadership and all the issues that are surrounding health care systems and the challenges they have – and the need for public health to be very closely tied to city operations – it makes sense to me to have Cambridge’s public health department be part of the city of Cambridge. CHA is a regional health care system. None of the other cities in which CHA operates have their public health department reporting to it.”