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At its mid-project report given on Dec. 15, five students who comprise a Lafayette Technology Clinic team presented their outline for a comprehensive health preparedness plan for the Allentown and Bethlehem Health Bureaus. They plan to run drills of their plan this spring.
Tech Clinic is a hands-on course founded in 1986 that brings together students from different majors to help solve the real-world problems of a business, non-profit organization, or government body.
The team includes English major Abra Berkowitz ’09 (Sharon, Mass.), mechanical engineering major Emily Egge ’08(Annandale, N.J.), computer science major Roger Ellis ’07 (Brooklyn, N.Y.), art major Emily Gillespie ’07(Hammonton, N.J.), and chemical engineering major Briana Hecht ’08(Chestnut Hill, Mass.). Dan Bauer, professor of anthropology and sociology, and Lawrence Malinconico, associate professor of geology and environmental geoscience, are the team’s faculty mentors.
One of Tech Clinic’s goals is to refine and test the call centers, which act as information sources for citizens during an emergency. The team’s priority, however, is to develop, model, and drill points of distribution (PODs), or venues for the dispensing of medical supplies in response to a public health emergency. The number of PODs in a community is determined by population, and locations are ultimately approved by the state. PODs are not triage centers, but rather places where healthy people can go to receive preventative care in the event of a widespread health crisis.
Because POD selection is largely dependent on population distribution in a community, the team is using a geographic information system (GIS) to link information to location data, such as people to addresses, and then layer that information to provide a clearer picture of how it all works together. GIS is a collection of computer hardware, software, and geographic data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.
They also are using a software package called SimProcess to model a call center and a POD. The program allows the team to visualize process dynamics and bottlenecks and estimate timing and resources. The SimProcess simulation will lead to the establishment of a physical working POD and call center.
Other important components of the project so far have included visiting existing sites, such as Agricultural Hall and East Side Youth Center in Allentown and Bethlehem Catholic High School, and observing each location’s organization and layout.
Vicky Kistler, acting director of the Allentown Health Bureau, has been working closely with Tech Clinic and is impressed by the team’s results so far. Kistler, who stresses the importance of Tech Clinic’s work, anticipates testing the POD next semester.
“It is always a pleasure to work with the Lafayette Tech Clinic students and staff,” she says. “I am very much looking forward to a spring drill of a POD. Tech Clinic has identified software and technology that can really help Public Health better serve citizens during times of emergencies. The work Tech Clinic is doing can have a direct impact on the health of a community. We sincerely hope that we will not be faced with an emergency that requires a large-scale public health response, but we need to prepare. Tech Clinic is helping with a drill that will identify needs for improvement and allow us to make changes proactively.”
Malinconico believes the students are not only serving the community, but also learning what it takes to succeed in the professional world. The project requirements Tech Clinic demands are preparing them for the challenges they will face after graduation.
“[Tech Clinic] is experiential learning at its best,” says Malinconico. “This problem that the students are helping to solve is a daunting one, as evidenced by various studies suggesting that very few states are prepared for medical crises. The students have to learn to work together to solve a real-world problem, synthesize data, suggest imaginative solutions, and then present their findings in both written and oral formats. They have done a good job synthesizing the information to date, and their resulting suggestions and drills that will be conducted in the spring should be very productive.”
The student team is finding the project challenging, but deeply rewarding. Not only are they learning essential skills, but they have the opportunity to see just how important those skills are in a professional environment.
As an English major, Berkowitz had to fight the urge to run in the opposite direction when she first heard the term Tech Clinic. Now at the midway point in her team’s work with the Allentown and Bethlehem Health Bureaus, Berkowitz is glad she signed on for the yearlong project.
“Tech Clinic is far from the daunting, mind-bending lingo that I had originally feared,” she explains. “Tech Clinic has given me the opportunity to apply everything I am learning inside and outside the classroom at Lafayette to a real-world situation. I am not the student, but the professional, and I have quickly learned, from the first phone call, professionalism, preparedness, and hard work are vital skills to have upon graduation. There are no paper extensions and no grade curves; our clients – the Allentown and Bethlehem Health Bureaus – are just that, clients who have expectations and goals that must be met. By working with Tech Clinic, I have learned the importance of organization, scheduling, and communication; everyone in the professional world is busy, and when meetings need to be organized or work needs to be discussed, planning is key. Tech Clinic’s wonderful focus on the real world gives me an exciting taste of the future even as I enjoy the present.”
Hecht, who plans to attend medical school after graduation, has learned a great deal about the issues facing pandemic preparedness plans, and how each team member can use his or her own personal skills to contribute to the team and the needs of the Allentown and Bethlehem Health Bureaus.
“It is a great experience to be able to work so closely with the city health bureaus while still being an undergraduate student,” she says. “This is certainly an invaluable opportunity that cannot be learned in the classroom, and we have all grown from the experience already in the way we work with our clients and each other. No matter which path we are individually pursuing, together we are practicing a team dynamic that is an essential component of any workplace in any field.”
Berkowitz echoes Hecht’s feelings about the excellent rapport among team members. She credits their various academic backgrounds and personal skills with strengthening the team and yielding productive results. She also notes that the project has made her more aware of the work that goes into preparing a community for a health crisis.
“Working with such wonderful other Tech Clinic members, I have learned the importance of teamwork in accomplishing a goal,” she says. “Our enormously positive group dynamic has really helped to best work with our clients, as well as to accomplish our goals with efficiency. We are from such a diversity of academic disciplines and bring so many huge assets to the table. Our own experiences come together to form a team that is professional, intelligent, and fun.”
“Our project has really opened my eyes to one of the most actively evolving, constantly changing fields in the professional world,” Berkowitz continues. “Before Tech Clinic, I had hardly been interested in pandemic preparedness. I had always assumed that in the event of an emergency, plans were in place that would quickly and efficiently solve any threats to my well-being, and life would easily continue on unchanged. In regions throughout the country, the importance of planning has come to the front of newspapers; people are finally realizing that ‘wow, we really do need to get to work on our preparedness.’ Not only am I learning about how a city or region should react in the event of pandemic or bioterrorism, but I am working with Tech Clinic to make that happen. This opportunity is incredible. The work we are doing as undergraduates is truly exciting and engaging.”
Next semester, the Tech Clinic team plans to develop a more sophisticated SimProcess for the PODs, design a floor plan for a walk-to POD in Allentown and a drive-through plan for a location in Bethlehem, and conduct a physical test of a POD based on those designs. After the physical tests, they will refine the SimProcess model to reflect their results. The team also will integrate GIS information from Allentown into the SimProcess models for the walk-to POD in the city.
In the spring, the students also will take into consideration issues such as volunteers to staff the PODs, the development of suitable paperwork that includes varying medical emergencies and translations for different languages, and programs to provide staff with proper emergency training.