This is great idea from FredPlease contact your local State legislator toget
their support Frank SBHSC
---Subject: Re: UUP: Use SUNY students, staff, campuses to speed up vaccinations
Great idea for maximum inoculations strategy
On Jan 5, 2021, at 1:49 PM, United University Professions
<econnect@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Colleagues,Your union, United University Professions, is working for you.To
keep you in the know, your union is sending UUP media releases to our members
and supporters. Thank you for being a UUP member. Together, we are stronger.
CONTACT: Mike Lisi at 518-640-6600Lisi’s cell number is
518-944-9528mlisi@xxxxxxxxxxx; @mikelisi FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEJanuary 5, 2021
UUP: Use SUNY students, staff, campuses to speed up vaccinations The State
University of New York—its students, faculty and staff and
facilities—should be immediately used to rapidly administer the millions
of COVID-19 vaccine doses New Yorkers will need to be protected from the
pandemic ravaging the U.S. Frederick E. Kowal, president of United University
Professions, which represents more than 37,000 SUNY employees at SUNY’s
four-year campuses, said that SUNY medical students and medical residents could
work together to form volunteer SUNY “Vaccination Brigades.” SUNY
students studying to become pharmacists, ophthalmologists, emergency medical
technicians, nurses, veterinarians and other medical professionals would also
be encouraged to volunteer for the brigades. The student-led brigades would be
part of the teams that would deliver vaccinations at SUNY’s 64 campuses.
“SUNY can be a major player in ramping up vaccinations across the
state,” said Kowal, who leads America’s largest higher education
union. “We’ve got thousands of medical and pre-med students who can
help with vaccinations, and thousands of non-medical students who could assist
with support.” “The situation is changing rapidly and the numbers
of those with COVID-19 are rising across the state,” he continued.
“Experts are calling for aggressive action and we couldn’t agree
more.”Kowal pointed to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at
Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, who told Politico.com that the only
way to make President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to deliver 100 million
vaccination doses in his first 100 days in office is to start vaccinating as
many people as possible—in tents in outdoor sports stadiums or places
with ample parking. In a Jan. 3 op-ed in The Washington Post, Dr. Ashish Jha,
dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, calls for the delay
of the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in favor of vaccinating as many
people as possible to save lives. Jha said he expects the more contagious
strain of coronavirus, first detected in the U.K. and now in the U.S., will
become the dominant strain of the virus in this country over the next few
months. “We need to get as many vaccinations into as many arms as
possible as quickly as possible,” Kowal said. “The pandemic is
raging and the more contagious variant of coronavirus is in New York. We need
to take immediate action. From infrastructure to people power, SUNY has many
elements already in place to rapidly assemble and deploy vaccination brigades
to inoculate as many people as possible.” SUNY has about 8,500 students
in medical schools and medical programs at SUNY’s academic medical
centers and SUNY’s College of Optometry. This total does not include
students in SUNY veterinary, dentistry and nursing programs. Also, volunteer
opportunities would be available for thousands of non-medical students to help
with the massive undertaking of distributing and tracking the vaccine doses.
Students in SUNY’s emergency medicine programs—training to become
paramedics and EMTs—could be asked to transport people to and from
vaccination sites.Kowal said SUNY facilities—gymnasiums, lecture halls,
athletic fields, and parking lots—could easily be used as staging areas
to vaccinate thousands of people each day. Setting up vaccination clinics at
rural campuses such as Potsdam, Canton, Alfred and Cortland could be
instrumental in getting the vaccine to people in outlying areas. SUNY’s
university centers in Albany, Binghamton and Stony Brook; and downtown and
metro-area campuses—in places like Syracuse, Plattsburgh, and
Farmingdale—are situated near underserved and underrepresented
communities and could serve as vaccination centers for those populations.
“This is a Herculean task and SUNY students, faculty, staff and
facilities can and should be utilized to accomplish it,” he said. Kowal
suggested that students who volunteer for the SUNY vaccination brigades should
receive recognition for their efforts—which could range from course
credit to reducing or even eliminating tuition costs for a semester or a
year.“These students will be going to war and they should be rewarded for
it,” said Kowal. “Getting these vaccinations into the arms of New
Yorkers is literally a matter of life and death. And much like returning GIs
benefited from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s groundbreaking GI Bill, these
students should have their educations paid for by the state’s residents
as we will all be safer because of their efforts.” Kowal said that UUP
looks forward to working with the governor’s office and SUNY Chancellor
Jim Malatras to advance the vaccination brigades initiative. UUP is the
nation's largest higher education union, with more than 42,000 academic and
professional faculty and retirees. UUP members work at 29 New York
state-operated campuses, including SUNY’s public teaching hospitals and
health science centers in Brooklyn, Long Island and Syracuse. It is an
affiliate of NYSUT, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education
Association, and the AFL-CIO.-30-
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