Lincoln County Public Health has a new deputy director with both a background in humanitarian assistance in Third World countries and experience on the Oregon coast.
Florence Pourtal became second-in-charge of the county agency Sept. 28, replacing Nicole Fields, who left this summer to work in public health in Bellingham, Wash.
Pourtal was head of public health for Coos County for five years until May, when she left that agency.
Between 2002 and 2010, Pourtal worked in South Sudan, Tanzania, Vietnam, Morocco, and elsewhere to get healthcare, nutrition, and social service programs to people in need. Before that, she had earned her bachelor’s degree in public law and her master’s degree in international humanitarian assistance from universities in France, where she was born.
Pourtal earned her master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine around the same time she relocated to the United States. After working for two years for a nonprofit in Portland, she was named the Public Health Administrator of Coos County in 2014.
As deputy director in Lincoln County, Pourtal oversees many of the public health programs, including health promotion, environmental health, and communicable disease, the program that entails the county response to COVID-19. Thanks to her work responding to the early months of the virus in Coos County, she is well aware of public health expectations and requirements in Oregon. Her focus now is to get the local perspective.
With the on-going pressure of leading the area’s COVID response, Lincoln County Public Health Director Rebecca Austen said she is thankful for this “passionate and seasoned public health professional.”
In the county’s response to COVID-19, Pourtal said “people had to jump into roles they have never played before and they really seemed to rise up to the challenge of ensuring the community is as protected as possible.”
