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Daniel Van Arsdale
Daniel Van Arsdale has been a practicing physician in Southampton for about 12 years, and he said he’s running for Southampton Town Trustee because “you quickly realize that if you limit your influence to the four walls of your office, you’re missing an opportunity to contribute to the greater health of the community.”
The vast majority of health care outcomes — between 80 and 85 percent, said Van Arsdale — are driven by social issues surrounding health: “what you eat, drink, what you breathe in,” and the intersection of health with socio-economic, gender, race and age factors “not controlled by physicians historically.”
Van Arsdale is board certified in family medicine, and hospice and palliative care, “where I kind of firsthand saw the impact that the environment has on many people’s health outcomes.” He works at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Westhampton Primary Care Center.
John Bouvier encouraged him to run, Van Arsdale, a Democrat, said of the soon-to-be termed-out councilman, and said he took the encouragement given how the Trustees’ role “is exclusively focused on two things,” access and clean water.
“Being around nature is important to health, psychological and physical health,” said Van Arsdale, who clams recreationally with his two kids. “Nitrates from wastewater and fertilizer are linked to cancers,” he said, “and we have a lot of nitrates in our waters.”
The first-time candidate said he’d bring his various experiences to bear as a Trustee.
“It’s a nonpartisan kind of thing, but where the Trustees don’t have authority, they have power and influence on the Town Board,” and Suffolk County, adding that he would “advocate for access to people, to advocate not just for the clams in the water but for the people to enjoy the clams. No algae blooms, no red tides.”
The candidate was born near Asbury Park, New Jersey. His first Long Island residence was in Huntington, followed by a flurry of South Fork stop-ins: Noyac, and then Penny Lane in Hampton Bays, “then to East Quogue and then from there to Flanders.” The unifying element: “All these properties were on bodies of water.”
Van Arsdale, who now lives in Remsenburg with his family, is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Tikrit, Iraq, in 2005, where he commanded an ambulance platoon at Forward Operating Base Danger. He initially joined as a chaplain’s assistant. “I wanted to be a priest,” he said.
He related his experiences in Saddam Hussein’s hometown to how he’d approach the Trustee posting, if elected.
“I was an officer in the Army,” he said. “You quickly learn people have this idea that you tell people what to do, and they go and do it. What you learn is you need to hear multiple perspectives. You need to hear the absolute contra argument to what you want to do in order to make a good decision.”
