Public Health Sanitarian
Job Description
Established in 1805, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (the NYC Health Department) is the oldest and largest health department in the country. Our mission is to protect and improve the health of all New Yorkers, in service of a vision of a city in which all New Yorkers can realize their full health potential, regardless of who they are, how old they are, where they are from, or where they live.
As a world-renowned public health agency with a history of building transformative public health programming and infrastructure, innovating in science and scholarship to advance public health knowledge, and responding to urgent public health crises from New York City’s yellow fever outbreak in 1822, to the COVID-19 pandemic we are a hub for public health innovation, expertise, and programs, and services. We serve as the population health strategist, and policy, and planning authority for the City of New York, while also having a vast impact on national and international public policy, including programs and services focused on food and nutrition, anti-tobacco support, chronic disease prevention, HIV/AIDS treatment, family and child health, environmental health, mental health, and racial and social justice work, among others.
The Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation (BFSCS) protects the public, including New York's most vulnerable citizens from a broad range of hazards that may pose a threat to health or safety. This includes hazards related to food safety wherever meals are served to the public, including restaurants, school cafeterias, mobile food vending carts, senior centers and soup kitchens, firsthand and second-hand smoke for all places of employment and public spaces. BFSCS also monitors compliance with regulations in other facilities, such as tattoo parlors, correctional facilities, and homeless shelters. Additionally, BFSCS investigates environmental health complaints received from New York City residents.
Duties will include but not be limited to:
- Making periodic inspections of commercial and social service establishments, to include but not limited to restaurants, bars, nightclubs, adult entertainment establishments, hookah bars, mobile food vending carts, commissaries, bakeries, homeless shelters, senior centers, correctional facilities, schools to review compliance with the New York City Health Code and other public health regulations to ensure they have a safe and wholesome food supply.
- Enforcing provisions of Smoke-Free Air Act, Tobacco Product Regulation Act, and other tobacco free related regulations aim at creating a smoke-free environment and reducing access of tobacco products to minors.
- Reviewing menu and menu boards to observe compliance with nutritional requirements aid at reducing and combating chronic diseases and obesity.
- Preparing inspection reports using handheld computers. Preparing and serving court summonses when specific violations of applicable City, State laws and regulations are found.
- Enforce anti-corruption control policies.
- Testifying at Office of Trials and Hearings, and other courts when required.
- Traveling throughout the five boroughs using mass transit.