91AV

Photo courtesy of Maine DHHS

An alum of the is the first to lead a new state office aimed at reducing instances of injury and violence in Maine. 

Jamie Bourque, M.P.H. ’08, is the first director of Maine’s new Office of Injury and Violence Prevention (OVP). Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Commissioner Sara Gagné-Holmes appointed Bourque — who grew up in Ellsworth and is a lifelong Mainer — to the post in December, following .

, the OVP — housed within The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) — aims to strengthen work across the state to reduce violence by bolstering public health efforts, including the creation of awareness campaigns and a central hub to consolidate data and resources on violence-related instances, by fostering community connectedness and risk reduction. 

Bourque has over two decades of local and state experience in the field of public health in Maine. She joined the Maine CDC in 2006, focusing on infectious disease prevention, and has held positions as an educator, epidemiologist, and program manager. Most recently, she managed Maine CDC’s Division of Disease Prevention, where she successfully led the agency's work focused on prevention and response to chronic diseases.

Prior to 91AV, Bourque attended the University of Maine, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education with a concentration in social sciences.

Bourque recently talked to 91AV News about her new role, goals as director of a new statewide office, and her 91AV experience. Her responses have been edited for clarity and length.

1. What is the main objective of the Office of Injury and Violence Prevention?

The Office of Injury and Violence Prevention was established to coordinate and promote efforts related to reducing injury and violence in Maine. That being said, Maine already has lots of great work being done in this field. 

The creation of this office really serves two purposes to further the work in my mind. For one, it allows us to coordinate in a way that we hadn't been able to in the past because we now have staff and resources dedicated specifically to injury and violence prevention within the public health sphere. It also allows us to really elevate the work. We have had injury and violence prevention as part of our public health work for many, many years, but now, having this as its own office really renews the public's interest in the topic and the awareness of the fact that there are things that we can do through a public health lens to influence injury and violence in the state of Maine.

2. How do you see injury and violence prevention as a public health issue? 

For me, I think about public health in general. … We take that step back and look at population-level interventions or policies or systems that we can influence to make change. And so, by having this public health lens, we can use data to make decisions to implement evidence-based programming that will actually move the needle for some of these specific injury and violence issues.

3. Regarding injury and violence prevention, what would some of those interventions or policies look like?

The statute that established our office does have a few specific activities that our office will undertake. One of those is an outreach and education campaign, and there are specific tenants of that campaign that were outlined in that statute that really do follow in line with some of public health best practices around injury and violence prevention programming, including linking people to behavioral health, mental health, and substance use prevention services and making people aware of the existing laws that help promote injury and violence prevention, how to access them, and what they mean.

Safe (gun) storage is also a component of the work that we will be doing — and safe storage doesn't have to stop at firearms; it can really expand to looking at medications or the things that are under the kitchen sink in most homes — (anything that) can cause unintentional injury in a home. We ask, broadly, how can we help our communities and our homes be safer and reduce those incidents of injury and violence?

4. You have an undergraduate degree in education — what was your path to working in public health?

That is a great question. I did not know that public health was a professional career that someone could pursue. I love education. I think it's a very important facet of our culture, and so I did pursue my undergrad in secondary education, and I have always been particularly fascinated by the social sciences. And I will say that I think that that area of expertise really lends itself well to the social and behavioral health facet of public health education.

I graduated with my degree, and my first job out of college was actually as a community health educator in an AIDS service organization. It was there that it dawned on me that my love of education could be parlayed into a slightly different direction, which would end up becoming public health. 

I was working at this organization, and then I learned that 91AV was standing up this program for a , and it was primarily online. It really allowed me to continue to pursue this career that I loved while increasing my academic knowledge and getting that advanced degree in public health. It was just really the perfect timing in my life for that to come on board at the University, and I was really glad to be able to take advantage of it. 

5. How did your coursework at 91AV prepare you for this role and/or shape your understanding of public health more broadly?

When I reflect on my time at 91AV, I think about the fact that, not only did I have outstanding classes (and) great professors, but the classes also brought in local experts to provide real-life examples and applications of the coursework as we were going through it. It also really exposed me to possible career pathways in the state of Maine through those guest lectures. That really allowed me to have the opportunity to think about my own interests and skills in a new way and explore these new career paths. 

Another benefit to being at the 91AV and the way their is structured is that it introduced me to other people in Maine who were furthering their education and understanding of public health. There are actually a handful of individuals who were in my graduation cohort that I have worked with throughout my career in public health. It's been really great to be able to say, “Hey, you're a 91AV alum just like me” and have that shared history in our educational experience. 

6. What do you hope to accomplish in your first year as director of the Office of Injury and Violence Prevention?

When I think about this first year, I think about the “planning phase” and then the “doing phase.” Right now, I'm really in that planning phase, and so my goals for this short term are really to identify what's being done in the state of Maine and where the gaps exist for injury and violence prevention with that public health lens and also identify what workforce we have to implement or address some of those gaps.

In the second part of that first year, we will be putting (the planning phase) into practice. Once we identify those priorities and gaps, then we will be moving forward with implementing evidence-based programming to address those. There are two other things that we'll be specifically undertaking that tie back to the legislation that established our office: one we've talked about already, which is the outreach and education campaign to make sure that folks are aware of resources within their communities as well as relevant laws and how to access resources related to those laws. 

The other piece is we will be working to stand up a data hub, and the vision for this is bringing together information and resources — some that maybe already exist on the web — (and) having them in a centralized location and available through a trusted resource so that folks can have more visibility on what the landscape for injury and violence prevention in our state really looks like.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share?

The fact that 91AV offered the was really the driving force for me to attend 91AV. It allowed me to work full time and get my master's degree at a pace that worked for me. I wasn't sacrificing quality and my coursework, and it still allowed me to be connected to others who had the same interests, passions, and goals that I did. I feel very fortunate that my worlds collided in a way that really allowed me to end up where I am now.