Many in the Jamat around the country have been moved by the lack of adequate personal protective equipment available to healthcare workers and other frontline responders during this COVID-19 crisis. These dedicated professionals are risking their own lives to save others. Others have been concerned about the plight of those unable to work, and who are finding it difficult to provide food for their families at this time. Some of these generous individuals are being recognized in this series for taking their own initiative to make a difference, and for illustrating the ethics of our faith by reaching out to those in need.
Before the onset of the current pandemic became clear, a group of Northwestern medical students brainstormed ways to better inform their local Chicagoland community on the implications of COVID-19, and the actions individuals can take to safeguard themselves from the virus. The student volunteers quickly formalized their initiative in late March 2020, a few days before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, into “Northwestern Students Supporting the Community During COVID-19” (NU SSCC).
This organization, spearheaded by Emma Office, Tricia Rae Pendergrast, and Tazim Merchant, has expanded to include 140 student volunteers from Feinberg, providing their community with services ranging from grocery delivery, elderly check-in calls, prescription delivery, virtual tutoring for students, to the virtual dissemination of COVID-19 content on prevention, symptoms, and treatment.
Tazim, a co-founder of NU SSCC and a first-year medical student, expressed that “…gearing up to take action quickly, was an intuitive decision,” inspired by the quick-thinking Hurricane Harvey relief efforts in Texas organized by the Houston Ismaili Jamat.
“I saw how quickly and selflessly the Ismaili community came together then, to help the people impacted,” Tazim said. “I drew parallels to our current situation, and as more data about the virus became available, I knew we needed to take action.” She drew inspiration from the September 2017 relief efforts, and along with her peers, designed a system to meet the needs in the community, with five self-sufficient teams focusing on best practices, public relations, virtual education, and general volunteer management.
With the increasing demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), Tazim expanded her efforts and joined the management team of GetMePPE Chicago.
“We’re really focused on the equitable distribution of PPE. For instance, when we shifted to supporting community organizations’ needs for PPE, we tried to target institutions on the South and West sides of Chicago,” Tazim commented. GetMePPE synthesizes and reviews daily requests from health and community institutions alongside the results of their proactive outreach to targeted facilities. They then utilize their volunteer base to source donations from other networks as well as businesses (e.g construction companies, nail salons, etc.) whose daily operations are on hold and which may have extra non-medical grade PPE to donate. The Management team of GetMePPE Chicago, based on the daily data collected, evaluates the most equitable allocation of PPE.
While no formal research or industry guidance is available on what constitutes ‘equitable distribution’ for PPE, Tazim and her team have developed a model to quantify need, which includes variables such as an institution’s COVID-19 positive burden rate, geography, and demographics.
“We’ve consulted with two physicians who have a background in medicine that have confirmed our model for “equitable distribution,” Tazim said. Along with Pendergrast and Roger Smith, members of the GetMePPE Chicago management team, she received the “COVID-19 Ethics and Humanities Grant” from the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Northwestern University to continue to research and publish guidance on a quantitative approach to the ethical and equitable distribution of PPE.
“I think this is an area of great curiosity for me, personally, as there’s ample opportunity for us to use our real-time matching process to develop an approach that is fair. Since we haven’t had a pandemic like this before, a virus that so greatly threatens the exhaustion of medical resources, we have to figure this out real-time,” Tazim remarked.
As of June 30, 2020, Tazim and her peers through GetMePPE, have delivered the following units to over 80 health and community facilities in the Chicagoland area:
- 53,554 N95 Respirators
- 14,000 KN95 Respirators
- 28,035 Face Masks
- 10,331 Cloth Masks
- 319,278 Face Shields
- 156 L Hand Sanitizer
- 59 G Disinfectant
- 5,537 Isolation Gowns
- 2,015 Boxes of Gloves
- 324 Tyvek Suits
They have raised $30,000 through their GoFundMe page through contributions from over 200 unique donors to purchase PPE. With values rooted in empathy, altruism, and generosity, these students translated their medical knowledge and training into a real-time problem-solving effort.
You can learn more at getmeppechicago.org.
