Ebola Response Team Needs Staff and Equipment

The head of the New Ebola Emergency Response Mission, Anthony Banbury, outlines 'teams are on the ground, he said, but 500 are required. The needs to aid the teams include protective gear and about a thousand vehicles To lend a hand… Posted from Caroline Clarke of linkedin.

SERVED UP

This is unexpected, I thought.  I came to the Shelter to help cook for the hundred or so people expected that afternoon.  Granted, I was shamed into guilt for not acting on good intentions.  I stood, gazing toward the far end of that small kitchen.  I felt as contrite as a little boy whose mother had baked him sweets despite his slothfulness in doing something for her.  

So, here’s what happened.  Weeks before, my wife, Stascia, and I were making arrangements with another family concerning our kids.  The other family’s schedule conflicted because they were going to help out at a place called Inner City Night Shelter. 

My wife is an educator.  She helps people every day by just having a conversation about a personal issue or helping someone attain an educationally related goal.    The family to which we spoke helped feed people trying to get their lives back.  Me, I give to causes.  I write about causes.  My articles support those on the ground doing the work.  There is a need for those types of things, but I am not on the ground with them.  In this sense, I am removed and impersonal to those whom I am ultimately trying to help support.   My perch has me away from following the timeless principles of a more personal presence like visiting, serving, and helping to bear a burden.  My more “physical presence” efforts were sporadic and far… very far between.   So, there I was defenseless against words that really weren’t directed at me or meant to cause conviction.  People were just talking.

On Saturday, March 15, 2014, I arrived at Inner City Night Shelter, Arnold St, Savannah, GA.  The shelter provides services for men and women.  Individuals can spend the night, take a shower, and have a meal.  Through transitional services, the shelter provides help into a more stable situation.  This includes helping former inmates as well.  

I took a moment to look around the room.  The door was about ½ meter behind me to the left.  A walk-in refrigerator and a walk-in freezer made the wall directly behind me.  White cabinets lined the walls to my front left – doors up top, drawers and doors on the bottom topped by a counter.  The counter had a sink in it.  A stainless steel table stood in front of me.  To my right, there was a gas stove with a hood.  Next to the stove was a small sink.  About six steps away, on the far wall, was a three-basin stainless steel sink with a commercial dishwasher to the left of it.  And there I was, staring at the dishwasher, dumbfounded and undone by what should have been obvious.  That is, in this one place, as in many other places, there are many needs.  Those needs range from something as simple as putting a sandwich on a plate to something more complex that actually required a philosophically dyed in the wool life-cycle asset manager. 

Dishwasher All Shiny and Back In Action

I walked over to do a visual inspection.  The detergent lines were cut.  I figured the device wasn’t working.  The Shelter is not a place to just let something that works go unused.  Someone had probably used the lines to serve another need.    I asked some of the other food preparation team members about it.  They said it had been broken for some time.  The team introduced themselves and went to work preparing sandwiches and a hot meal.  They told me to connect with the center’s director, Yvonne Pryor.  The machine would have to wait until we were done preparing food.   

Later, Ms Pryor and I spoke about the dishwasher.  She had planned to purchase a new one because of the information she received that it was better to buy a new one.  We made arrangements for me to come back and troubleshoot the machine.  

A couple of weeks later, Ms Pryor and I looked at the dishwasher again.  She helped watch the detergent pumps to see if they were all cycling while I watched the camshaft that controlled the pumps, listened for solenoids, and checked the hot water pressure.  I hadn’t been able to find a service manual for the ten to fifteen year old machine.  Yet, there was still a certain amount I could tell about its operation.  The hot water flowed.  The water pumped worked.  The camshaft turned.  The detergent pumps cycled.  The water drained.  Granted, without a manual, there was no way of telling if every cycle was correct.  But, it did not look like Inner City Night Shelter needed a new one.  From previous research, I saw that parts were still available.  Only a minor repair was required.  What Ms. Pryor needed was an economical, simple, and self-sustaining method that maintained the machine, trained the staff, helped with continuous health department certification, all in a manner that was basically effortless for her to manage. Without going into the detail, that’s what we accomplished.

·       Writing about causes and helping to support those on the ground in places I cannot be present are still very important.  I continue to do them.  As they say, the rub is the commitment to take the time to be present where I can.  In the hustle of taking care of family, of bridging a strategy to results that generate revenue, of filtering the noise to meet a customer’s needs, of writing, posting and supporting the next blog post, of marketing my novel, of just hustling from one moment to the next in a calm and collected manner… how do you turn good intentions into physical presence at a place that serves others.  Those already on the ground need more team members.  As in the case of Inner City Night Shelter, it may require physical tasks and your professional know-how.

Click This Link To Find Out More About Inner City Night Shelter

Population Health and Dr. Andrey Ostrovsky

Andrey Ostrovsky is a pediatric physician, CEO and co-founder of Care ^atHand, and social entrepreneur.  While there is a place, he believes, for healing one patient at a time, he wants to affect entire populations, starting locally, then regionally, across the globe.  Read Part 1

Begin Part 2 of 3

Dr. Ostrovosky set out on an unusual thread right out of high school.  While his “not so tactical grandparents” were happy that he decided to go through medical school.  The seams zigzagged well outside the pattern.  

“What did you do after high school?”

“I went to Boston University for undergraduate.  I took six month off to move to Geneva and work for the World Health Organization as a data analyst.  That was my first large scale, high-level work experience.  There, I started to get a better understanding of health systems and just systems thinking in general.

“During my time at the World Health Organization, I helped organize a conference.  The memorable from that conference was a nonprofit called the Health Systems Action Network.  Throughout the end of undergrad and into medical school, I had been an advocate for involving trainees into global health to help strengthen health systems.”  The program came about from meetings in 2005.  “I was invited by the board to run that organization.  I ran that organization while I was in medical school.  My pathway of early acceptance into medical school allowed me to do that.”

In his third year of medical school, he went to work with the Doris Duke Foundation.  He moved to San Fransico, California to work on a technology project for the health department in finding correlation between brain volume using MRI and neurodevelopmental outcomes in neonates with congenital heart defects.

Yet, another break, he spent six months of his senior year working for U.S. Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.

It was during the stretch of time he spent in San Francisco to the time he spent in the U.S. Capitol that Care ^atHand began to take shape.  The idea came about when Doctor Ostrovsky’s friend, Jeffrey Levy, came to understand the challenges of caring for aging parents. It wasn’t until April 2011, that Andrey’s friend contacted him.

            “I knew he had ideas and frustrations regarding care for his parents.  He reached out to me as a physician and someone who had done some technology stuff in the past.  He quit his very lucrative job in Silicon Valley.  He asked me over.  I flew to San Francisco for a full day of brainstorming and meetings.   That was the beginning of Care ^atHand.

            “The name came from simplicity. We had a vision of something lightweight, something mobile.  We focused on a mobile, low-skilled workforce.  A mobile device would be carried in these caregivers’ hands, helping them to collect and communicate important information on patients they encountered in the community.”

            “How has that changed over the years?”    

“Initially, we wanted to automate workflow within home care. Typical home Personal Care Assistance services - we wanted to help with the activities of daily living.  We thought there was a big opportunity in this community to introduce mobile into that workflow and workforce.  We had a very innovative scheduling system.  We had very simple design, easy to deploy.  It was easy to use by a workforce that may be technology illiterate.  We saved a little money for our customers in homecare   but we did not have the impact we imagined. 

"We did this for about a year, year and a half and decided to take a step back.  We looked at where our passion was, where our strengths were.  When we looked at the intersection of the two, we realized that we were definitely on the mark with the workforce.  We are on the mark with the non-clinical folks.  Especially those that were unaccounted for, the gray workforce that’s not official.  It doesn’t have a MEDICARE reimbursement code behind it, a family care giver, a community health giver.  So we knew a lot about that workforce .  We are experts in that workforce and we are already experts in care coordination and transitions.  We are experts in big data, at least from the financing side of it.  So, what don’t we fit all this expertise together and focus in on digitizing care coordination.  We wanted to make care coordination a smarter process and in doing so, always emphasizing - how do we leverage the benefit of the community health worker and at the same time a clinician like a nurse?  That is the germ that led us to where our software application is now. “ 

ATLANTA FALCONS HONORS 3 GOOD SAMARITANS

The Atlanta Falcons (American Football Team) honored three people who helped a woman with fading vital signs.  On July 29, 2014,  Jordan Gray, David Hardy, and Vanecia Williams noticed something wrong with another passenger on their train.  After a quick assessment, they responded by rendering first aid, stopping the train, and continuing treatment until Emergency Medical Technicians arrived.

The Falcons honored them during the Falcons versus Miami Dolphins game on August 8, 2014.  This occurred through corporate sponsorship from Georgia Power's Everyday Heroes Program.

View Original News Report AT WSB TV

From the reader's Right to Left  

- Vanecia Williams is a Certified Nurse’s Assistant and seeks to become a physician.  Her hometown is Atlanta, GA.

- David Hardy was born in RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, United Kingdom, https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhardy62.  He has language skills in Mandarin and is passionate about public relations and working with people.

- Jordan Gray is studying to become a Patient Care Technician and is CPR certified.  Her long-term goal is success in the music industry as a performer and rapper.  Her hometown is Wetumpka, AL 

The original event was covered by WSB-TV news reporter Carl Willis.  The Atlanta Falcon's presentation was managed by Corey Miller of the team's marketing department.

ON THE JUMBOTRON AT THE GEORGIA DOME, ATLANTA, GA
WELL DONE!  THAT'S THE WAY TO RISE UP!