Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Visitation and Check-In:
Safe calls to residents/patients in hospice/senior homes to engage them in conversation.
Contact Information:
Danny Teraguchi (teradani@illinois.edu)
Academic Tutoring:
Zoom tutoring and activities with boys’ and girls’ clubs.
Contact Information:
Danny Teraguchi (teradani@illinois.edu)
Resource Production and Acquisition:
Sewing masks and gowns.
Contact Information:
Danny Teraguchi (teradani@illinois.edu)
Writing:
Cheerful cards and poems to hospice residents.
Contact Information:
Danny Teraguchi (teradani@illinois.edu)
Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Advocacy:
Vulnerable population advocacy and assistance is organized into multiple action teams centered on the unhoused population, incarcerated population, low-income population, immigrant population, and others at unique risk due to the current pandemic environment. Teams have organized individual events to directly support these populations, as well as advocacy campaigns to voice their concerns to public officials.
Contact Information:
Ed Vogel (ed@chicagobond.org)
Blood Drive:
Student leaders have coordinated a partnership with blood donation service organization Vitalant to organize 17 blood donation events over a 2-week period, from April 12-25, throughout the Chicagoland area.
Contact Information:
Emily Root (emily.root@my.rfums.org)
COVID-19 Education:
Student leaders have created multiple educational resources related to COVID-19. These include a weekly digest that outlines current and prospective response initiatives happening at the city and state level; weekly virtual grand rounds where students review and discuss COVID-related peer-reviewed journal articles; and assembled a webpage to act as an encyclopedia of external remote-access learning modules, which students can use to learn about COVID-19 as well as a variety of other clinical topics without having to leave their place of quarantine.
Contact Information:
Matthew Christensen (matthew.christensen@my.rfums.org)
Resource Production and Acquisition:
GetMePPEchicago is a PPE initiative led by medical students from Chicago Medical School and other Chicagoland health institutions. They have developed a robust network of PPE allocation, distribution, and production resources which has been utilized to provide PPE to more than 30 hospitals and clinical sites around the greater Chicago area.
Contact Information:
Ashley Cohen (GetMePPEchi@gmail.com)
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
Fundraising:
Fundraising to purchase food from local vendors to be delivered to our healthcare staff, supporting both our providers and staff as well as the local economy.
Contact Information:
Kyle Wieschhaus (kwieschhaus@luc.edu)
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
General Services:
The General Volunteer Management team ensure volunteer requests for virtual tutoring, grocery/prescription delivery, calling the elderly, etc. are filled safely and effectively. This team also compiles resources for families.
Contact Information:
Emma Office (emma.office@northwestern.edu)
Think Tank:
The goal of the Best Practices Team is determine best practices for SSCC team activities via outside resources + National Slack; specifically, this team both (i) researches what other schools are involved with and disseminates ideas for more efficient and effective execution by NU, and (ii) shares our best practices with other schools.
Contact Information:
Elizabeth Tsui (elizabeth.tsui@northwestern.edu)
Blood Drive:
The goal of the Blood Drive Team is increase awareness of blood shortages, help organize safe blood drive(s), and sign volunteers up for drives.
Contact Information:
Anuj Chokshi (anuj.chokshi@northwestern.edu), Alba Gonzalez (alba.gonzalez@northwestern.edu)
COVID-19 Education:
The goal of the Virtual Education Team is to eduate community members on COVID prevention, symptoms & treatment. The team is working to pilot their content within Feinberg’s ECMH program and then will reach out to nonprofits to disseminate virtual Zoom PPT / info sessions to their respective populations.
Contact Information:
Natalie Colaneri (natalie.colaneri@northwestern.edu)
Outreach and Social Media:
The Public Relations team’s goal is to increase awareness of Northwestern’s Students Supporting the Community during COVID (SSCC) efforts, especially those that are particularly time-sensitive (ex: PPE). This team will coordinate with the media on requests, help capture B-roll and/or photos, etc.
Contact Information:
Michael Boctor (michael.boctor@northwestern.edu)
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Childcare:
We are providing an internal childcare network to support local faculty.
Contact Information:
Internal Activity
University of Illinois College of Medicine
Resource Production and Acquisition:
#Getmeppe is part of the national organization. Our students are coordinating PPE donations and pickup in the Chicago area. They are contacting people with PPE and bringing supplies to the hospital.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
General Services:
Collecting and creating signs to display at the hospital to show our staff and doctors that we are appreciative of them! We hope this is a morale booster for them.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Arts, Media, and Entertainment:
Created a website for students to share activities they are doing to stay active and happy during this time. We have curated many resources and have a weekly challenge for students. We are having students share things they are doing through social media/instagram @cmsc.uicom. Visit our website.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Academic Tutoring:
Increased our Step 1 Preparation Series through our formal Peer Education Program to cover the time during COVID.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Research and Data Collection:
Medical students are helping the COVID team at UI Health do chart reviews to track down patients that had a positive COVID test but then were sent home from the ED and had to return for follow up. We have a team of students that have volunteered to assist the hospital with patient remote data collection on an as-needed basis.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Fundraising:
Our COVID Rapid Response Team is coordinating donations for several of the projects we are conducting.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Wellness:
Please see our website here: https://cmsc.org.uic.edu/covid-19wellness/.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Clinical Work:
Screening employees at University Employee Health. Providing screening services for UI Health employees.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Clinical Work:
Screening people at a homeless shelter for COVID symptoms daily. This is a dedicated team of medical students with a supervising attending who are providing daily screenings for all residents at the shelter. Two residents are on staff to evaluate positive screens and refer for follow up testing if needed.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Food Services:
Students are volunteering at the UI Health Pilsen food pantry. This is run by one of our attending’s family foundation and students regularly volunteer throughout the year. Students have been going daily to pack groceries for people served at the food pantry in a way that adheres to COVID guidelines and minimizes contact with other people.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Wellness:
Students part of Chicago Street Medicine are putting together care packages for families of patients with COVID. They are distributing these care packages to the families.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Childcare:
We are working on setting up a childcare system. Students have been eager to volunteer to provide childcare services for our attendings and staff who are working. We currently have this through an excel file and are working to scale it so it can be available to people throughout the hospital and medical school.
Contact Information:
Natasha Mehta (namehta2@uic.edu)
Ross University School of Medicine
Childcare:
Chicago COVIDsitters is working to help offset the impact of school closures and high work demands on healthcare workers. Chicago COVIDsitters supports healthcare workers and other essential workers in the Chicagoland area and surrounding suburbs by offering free childcare, pet sitting, and household errands. Our goal is to recruit volunteers to provide free services to those who need us most. If a healthcare worker is interested, we will match a local health professional student to the healthcare worker to address their specific request and need. To learn more, visit us at www.chicovidsitters.org.
Contact Information:
Chicago COVIDsitters (chicagocovidsitters@gmail.com)