Thanks to Dr. James Ham, we have these volunteer opportunities!
1. Hawaii H.O.M.E. Project (https://sites.google.com/view/hawaiihomeproject/about?authuser=0)
Contact: Dr. Teresa Schiff at schiff@hawaii.edu
The mission of the Hawaii H.O.M.E. Project is to improve quality and access to health care for Hawaii’s homeless, while increasing student and physician awareness and understanding of the homeless and their healthcare needs. The project was founded in August of 2005 and currently provides free medical services to sheltered and unsheltered homeless individuals, through weekly student-run free clinics per at nine sites across Oahu. In addition to these clinics, we also utilize our mobile health van for outreach to other unsheltered homeless populations on Oahu and to provide special events for the keiki at the shelters.
2. Aloha Stadium Drive-Thru COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic
Contact: Dr. Jill Omori at jill.omori@hawaii.edu
JABSOM is partnering with My Health Solutions and the AFL-CIO for their drive-thru mass vaccination clinics that will be happening at the end of April. They will be vaccinating for 4 days, but we are mainly helping on Saturday, April 24 and Sunday, April 25. Our students will be volunteering as vaccinators but we would like to have a volunteer faculty member at each station who will be vaccinating alongside 3 students and supervising them. There will be 6 rows of cars, but each car can have up to 4 people….so we would like 4 vaccinators for each row. There will be three shifts per day: 7am-12pm, 12pm-5pm, 5pm-10pm. This is a great opportunity for you to work closely with some of our students and to also give back to the community. If you are able to volunteer for any of these shifts (you can volunteer for more than one if you’d like), please email me back with your preference for time. I also don’t have all the faculty emails, so please feel free to share this with your colleagues if they didn’t get this email.
3. COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Clinic through Project Vision (https://www.projectvisionhawaii.org/)
Contact: admin@projectvisionhawaii.org
Project Vision Hawai`i was founded in 2007 by Dr. Michael Bennett, a local ophthalmologist who specializes in retinal surgery. With his oversight, the foundation for the program was developed by Hawai`i’s top experts in vision care. In 2011, under the guidance of a board and then Executive Director, Elizabeth “Annie” Valentin, Project Vision Hawai`i became a 501(c)3. As a community driven organization, expansion of Project Vision has been guided by need. Since 2007, it has grown from one mobile screening unit to four mobile screening units serving Hawai`i Island, Kaua`i, Lāna`i, Maui, Molokai`i and O`ahu. Project Vision has the only mobile health screening programs in Hawai`i that provide statewide services in communities with significant access-to-care challenges related to income, lack of insurance, geographical location, or cultural conflict. To date, Project Vision has provided free medical screening services to more than 115,000 patients across the state, including high populations of seniors, children from low-income families, immigrants, and individuals with disabilities.
4. COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Clinic through Hawaii Public Health Institute (https://www.hiphi.org/covid19/)
Contact: covidresponse@hiphi.org
HIPHI, along with the Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network are coordinating the Public Health Action network linking community members, healthcare workers and organizations with state and county leadership for solutions to mitigate COVID-19.
5. Team Rubicon. Papua New Guinea Emergency Medical Team Response
Contact: https://teamrubiconusa.org/joinus-covid-19-2/
On Tuesday, 06 April, Team Rubicon will deploy our first Emergency Medical Team of 2021 to Papua New Guinea. It will also be TR’s first international medical engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past several weeks COVID cases have spiked in Papua New Guinea, which only a few months prior registered zero cases. This week, according to the New York Times “about 70 percent of symptomatic patients are testing positive — among the highest rates in the world.” Complicating the situation is that over 10% of the country’s 500 healthcare workers have tested positive for COVID-19. Hampered by an already weak healthcare infrastructure, the situation is a virtual powder-keg and likely to be the world’s next COVID hotspot. Through coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO), and the government of PNG, TR will be deploying seven Greyshirts (one physician, four nurses, a logistician, and a team lead) to Wewak, East Sipak Province to augment local staff and decompress the provincial hospital. We will deploy two waves of Greyshirts over a six-week period. Alongside TR, EMTs from Australia and Germany will be supporting the GoPNG. Medicine Sans Frontier (Doctors without Borders) is also investing heavily in the COVID response.