Category Archives: Opportunity

April 17, 2020

Stop COVID-19: Get a mask on every face!

If you’d like to pitch in to help stop COVID-19, we’ve just launched a new website called Everyone Gets a Mask! that has all the stuff you need to do these things:

  1. Organize a team project to make and distribute large numbers of high quality homemade cloth masks to everyone in YOUR community* (in coordination with other local groups as necessary), OR ……
  2. Find and join an existing group doing something similar, OR ……
  3. Make a few masks for you and your family.

Q: Why is NOW the right time for you to take action?
A: It is now clear that COVID-19 is often spread by people who feel fine and don’t even know they are infected — and who are simply breathing, talking, laughing or singing! None of us want to be unwitting spreaders. On April 3, the US Centers for Disease Control (the CDC) recommended a step-up in protection in areas where there is COVID-19 activity: wearing cloth face coverings when out and about (in addition to social distancing, hand-washing, surface-cleaning, and covering coughs and sneezes).

Q: What needs to happen?
A: Over the next few weeks, our country needs to get cloth masks on the faces of almost everyone in every community* affected by COVID-19. Some people can’t wear masks, so we’ll never get to 100%. Experts predict that when 60% to 80% of us are wearing masks, as well as doing the other preventive practices, we will be able to slow or even stop the pandemic.

Q: Why cloth face masks?
A: Homemade cloth masks provide a lot better protection than none at all! As long as there is a shortage of manufactured surgical masks and N95 respirators, they must be saved for healthcare and emergency response workers. High quality cloth face masks filter much more effectively than poor quality ones. Everyone Gets a Mask! has technical specifications to guide you.

Q: Can masks do more than prevent infection?
A: Yes. They are a visible signal of unity and good will — concrete evidence that the wearer is caring for others in these hard times: “I am protecting you; you are protecting me.”

If you like these ideas, please check out the Everyone Gets a Mask! website then help this concept go viral by passing it along to people of good will – in your community* AND all around the country. The website was created as a gift to you, your family and friends, and your community* by a three-person team: Claudia Hix DO, David Siktberg MBA, and me, Jennifer Christian, MD.

* When we say your community, think of everyone in it:
• All the people in your family, neighborhood, company, club, congregation, civic organization, town or even county, including those who will be heading back to work in the next few weeks;
• Plus those who come to work in your area — especially those who provide essential services (who work in healthcare facilities, public safety and emergency response, grocery stores and pharmacies, delivery services, utilities, etc.), as well those who will be heading back to work;
• And the elderly or other individuals with risk factors that put them at higher risk of severe COVID-19 illness.

Remember: Over the next few weeks, our country needs to get cloth masks on the faces of almost everyone in every community affected by COVID-19. So please pass along this posting — or just the link (Everyone Gets a Mask! or www.webility.md/masks) — to as many colleagues, friends, family and organizations as possible in communities around the country. This applies – to those in areas that are experiencing the full fury of COVID-19, and those where the curve is clearly rising or may still rise.

And please tell us if you see something that could be clarified or improved – or share a story about what you have done with the website or the kit itself! We’ve already made a lot of changes based in input from others. Email us at masks@webility.md

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June 23, 2018

Don’t miss out! RETAIN grants are a big opportunity

RETAIN is a five year and $100 million Federal Grant program that state agencies must nominally lead.  However, the leadership team must be multi-stakeholder and include an organization that actually delivers hands-on medical care.  Moreover, the states will probably end up contracting for delivery of the many services by individuals or organizations in the private sector. Proposals are due in ONE MONTH – so if you’re tempted to get involved, join our list-serv now and learn what you need to do!  See more below.

RETAIN is the biggest opportunity for physicians who practice occupational medicine since the 1970’s — when NIOSH and OSHA were established. It’s also a huge opportunity for other professionals with expertise in preventing needless work disability during the early phase of the stay-at-work/return-to-work (SAW/RTW) process:  the first few weeks and months of an injury/illness episode.

RETAIN requires states to get involved VERY EARLY in new injury and illness episodes among workers they haven’t had on their radar — and arrange provision of several kinds of services with which these agencies have had little/no familiarity. Most of the state agencies that received the RFP (and must lead RETAIN in their state) have been confused and caught flat-footed by it. They really need professionals with expertise at the interface between healthcare and the workplace to pitch in at several levels:

– to help NOW with project design and proposal writing
– once the project launches, to help oversee, manage and tweak the project at the top level,
– in individual cases, to deliver specific services during the first weeks and months of work interruption. (In fact, eligibility for RETAIN program services ends after 6 months of work absence.)

I’ve set up a free list-serv for everyone who is interested in the possibility of getting involved with their state’s RETAIN project. My personal goal is to help as many states as possible to recruit appropriate leadership teams and write successful bids. The project is so unusual, I don’t think there will be many. The Feds plan to accept EIGHT bids (from eight states).

JOIN US — if you’re an occ doc or SAW/RTW professional who is willing to wade in, introduce yourself to strangers, and then join the small team that will be developing your state’s overall project design and writing its proposal (bid) between now and July 23. Once you join the list-serv, go to our website and read the small number of earlier and information-filled emails that will get you oriented and on the right track. You’ll find links to the RFP itself along with many other resources.

To join the RETAINers list-serv, go to https://groups.io/g/RETAINers and click on JOIN THIS GROUP

NOTE: Think big.  This is the beginning of an effort to knit together some holes in our social fabric to meet the needs of people who have been falling through the cracks.  The Feds are looking for proposals that will help workers with new health problems — regardless of what caused them.  The point is to help ANY worker for whom a new health condition is causing work interruption and, if the right things fail to happen, could threaten their job. Needlessly losing one’s livelihood and ending up on SSDI is a very poor outcome of a health condition — ESPECIALLY when it didn’t need to happen.

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