Media Coverage on RESOLVE’s COVID-19 Response Initiatives
Innovations and partnerships that strengthen our capacity to respond to large-scale crises
RESOLVE sees the need to improve our capacity to prevent and respond to emergencies like COVID-19, and we challenge ourselves and others to plan before a crisis and build resiliency. We build the capacity of communities, the private sector, civil society, institutions, and governments to prepare for and respond to public health, environmental, and economic emergencies. When a crisis hits we mobilize our networks to rapidly develop, test, deploy, and scale creative solutions to help tackle urgent problems like critical resource shortages. To address the needs created by the global coronavirus pandemic, RESOLVE supports a range of efforts, including creating and distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) to those who need it and supporting equitable access to COVID-19 vaccinations.
Our efforts are getting attention in the news. The following is a brief summary of select media coverage for some of the projects in our COVID-19 Response Initiative.
Unblocking supply chains to accelerate the response to the COVID-19 crisis
Open Source Medical Supplies was formed almost overnight to research, medically review, and disseminate open source plans for medical supplies used to treat COVID-19 that can be fabricated locally. OSMS supports, mentors, and guides local communities as they self-organize hospital systems, essential services, professional fabricators, makerspaces, and local governments into resilient, self-supporting supply units. On April 1, 2020, RESOLVE and OSMS officially announced their collaboration.
OSMS is a heroic, volunteer effort of over 450 dedicated professionals to rally and support a global movement. In its first two weeks of operation, OSMS helped organize tens of thousands of people all over the world in its Facebook group, supplied plans that volunteers turned into 280,000 medical supply items all over the world, produced an Open Source Medical Supply Guide for COVID-19, and released a Local Response Guide that helped local organizers form 95 local chapters globally.
Watch Gui Cavalcanti, OSMS co-founder, tell the story of 74,000 makers who joined together to produce PPE for healthcare workers and communities below:
OSMS was recognized for their efforts to crowdsource designs and plans for medical supplies, with features in publications including The New York Times, Forbes, CBC, and Newsweek.
Local OSMS chapters have continued to receive press coverage, including chapters in Cape Fear, NC, Hagensborg, BC, Fort Wayne, IN, and Lindenhurst, NY.
Click here for more information about OSMS.
Rallying makers, manufacturers, and markets to support COVID-19 response
RESOLVE helped launch Makers Respond, a grassroots network of volunteer makers and micro-manufacturers that are working around-the-clock to create personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline healthcare workers and others with a critical need. This structured, resourced, rapid-response system matches financial and material resources with volunteers who can quickly transform them and deliver them to medical systems in need. This initiative is able to leverage the capacity of large-scale supply chains to amplify the efforts of maker communities. In the future, after the current crisis, Makers Respond will be able quickly scale up and scale down as needed.
In May 2020, Makers Respond, in partnership with Coca-Cola North America, Boyd Corporation, K&W Finishing, and state agencies, donated 115,000 face shields to the State of Maryland and State of Michigan, which were distributed to frontline healthcare workers. Watch Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer acknowledge Makers Respond, Coca-Cola, and Boyd Corporation in an update on the state’s COVID-19 response here. Coca-Cola North America and Makers Respond also donated 50,000 face shields to healthcare workers in Pennsylvania in May 2020, which was covered by CBS 21 News.
Click here for more information about Makers Respond.
Getting PPE into the hands of election officials, poll workers, volunteers, and voters across the country
RESOLVE, VoteSafe, and Mission for Masks have joined forces to launch Gear Up to VoteSafe, a non-partisan initiative to get personal PPE into the hands of election officials, poll workers, and volunteers. During national elections, nearly 1 million people in the U.S. serve as election officials and poll workers managing the places Americans vote. With the 2020 election taking place during an unprecedented pandemic, voters and poll workers faced additional risk.
VoteSafe is a non-partisan coalition of election administrators and organizations co-chaired by former Governors Tom Ridge (R-PA) and Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) that endorses the simple principle that every American has the right to vote safely, even amidst the pandemic. Together, RESOLVE, VoteSafe, and Misison for Masks worked with election officials, polling sites, and other interested organizations to provide PPE at scale and initiate a communications effort to support safe in-person voting.
The Fulcrum described how VoteSafe contributed to delivering PPE to voting centers in the U.S. ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Our work was also featured in Bucks County Herald and Tampa Dispatch.
Click here for more information about Gear Up to Vote Safe
CommuniVax
A coalition to strengthen community involvement in an equitable COVID-19 vaccination rollout
In late 2020, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University launched the CommuniVax Coalition, a national alliance of social scientists, public health experts, and community advocates dedicated to strengthening local and national COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the U.S. The CommuniVax Coalition engages experts from fields including anthropology, public health, vaccinology, community engagement, and health policy, as well as advocates for specific communities of color, to research and implement solutions to health inequities that overburden communities of color, aiming to enable broader social change and durable community-level opportunities. Senior Mediator Beth Weaver represents RESOLVE on CommuniVax’s Working Group on Equity in COVID-19.
CommuniVax hosted a webinar on March 18, 2021, which discussed the specific recommendations made in their recently released state and local action plan on COVID-19 vaccination, Equity in Vaccination: A Plan to Work with Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond.
Principal Investigators Monica Schoch-Spana, PhD, and Emily K. Brunson, PhD, described the efforts of CommuniVax to encourage self-empowerment to end the current pandemic in Sapiens Magazine. The efforts of CommuniVax were also featured in publications including United Press International, Foreign Policy, and Homeland Preparedness News.
Partnering with the faith community to support COVID-19 vaccination access and uptake in underserved communities
RESOLVE’s Faith & Vaccines initiative rallies healthcare professionals to provide COVID-19 vaccination services to local faith-based communities, with a special emphasis on recruiting healthcare professionals from within those communities to help build trust and encourage vaccine acceptance. Faith & Vaccines also engages local faith-based organizations to host vaccination events and educate community members about the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine. The initiative brings together the partners needed to quickly and efficiently organize and implement local vaccination events (e.g., vaccine suppliers, pharmacies, healthcare professionals, local faith-based organizations).
Faith & Vaccines held its inaugural pop-up COVID-19 vaccine event on March 28, 2021 at the Islamic Center of Maryland. RESOLVE released a press release announcing the launch of the Faith & Vaccines initiative and the March 28 vaccination event. RESOLVE also released a press release on April 23 detailing efforts by Faith & Vaccines to encourage COVID-19 vaccination during Ramadan.
Click here for more information about Faith & Vaccines.
Laura Bartock and Beth Weaver
RESOLVE
March 31, 2020