This commentary is by Sarah Waring, state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development for Vermont and New Hampshire.
Over the course of a month, I had the chance to visit a hospital in Vermont and one in New Hampshire to meet with health care providers and celebrate transformational funding through USDA’s Emergency Rural Health Care grant program. From these visits, one message became overwhelmingly clear to me: Health care workers need help.
On Sept. 15, Springfield Hospital’s CEO, Dr. Bob Adcock, and his staff hosted a panel discussion on the state of health care in the Green Mountain State, which included congressional representatives, state leaders and other Emergency Rural Health Care grant recipients. Springfield received a $1 million award, part of $2,725,600 in total Emergency Rural Health Care grant funding throughout Vermont during 2022.
On Oct. 12 at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, New Hampshire, we celebrated another round of Emergency Rural Health Care grant awards, particularly a $1 million grant to Families Flourish Northeast, a community family-health facility on the hospital campus.
Families Flourish Chairwoman Courtney Tanner and the hospital president and CEO, Dr. Sue Mooney, hosted an insightful panel discussion featuring Xochitl Torres Small, the USDA undersecretary for rural development, along with congressional representatives, state health care leaders, and other Emergency Rural Health Care grant recipients.
Including the award for Families Flourish, Granite State health care institutions received $3,108,100 in Emergency Rural Health Care grants.
No matter the state, no matter the hospital or health care or service center, the stories of courageous, dedicated, exhausted and overextended health care workers were front of mind. Both discussions bolstered my respect and admiration for the people who engage in this most critical social project of helping, healing and giving hope to their neighbors.
When Covid-19 tore through our communities, it left us isolated from loved ones, confined to our homes and without our usual mental and physical health outlets. For too many, it left empty chairs at dinner tables. And for our health care workers, it put them on the front lines of a battle impacting their own families, their coworkers, communities and institutions in a way that no one could have anticipated.
Our health care workforce is reeling from the fight they undertook, on behalf of us all, when they showed up for work, and we are in a state of social debt to those in the industry, and the folks who put their own lives on the line by taking care of ours.
Thank you, Lyndsy McIntyre, chief nursing officer and chief operating officer for Springfield Hospital, who sprang to action in the Covid-19 outbreak. Working closely with the Vermont Department of Health, she immediately set Incident Command into motion, holding regular meetings and collaborating with staff and local service organizations. Over the next two years, her leadership brought urgently needed supplies, testing and lab services to Springfield.
Thank you, Rebecca “Becky” Burns, a registered nurse, and Aida Avdic, M.D., from Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. When Covid arrived, Becky stepped away from her role as director of community initiatives to set up a testing clinic for patients and community members. As the pandemic unfolded, she helped establish and operate a first-of-its-kind vaccine clinic and provided guidance and procedures to meet the health needs of her hospital’s employees. And Dr. Avdic, medical director of hospital medicine, showed incredible professionalism and leadership by demonstrating the importance and responsibility of entering patient rooms wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment. Her leadership helped everyone relax and do their jobs.
Thank you, Dr. Daisy Goodman with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, and recovery support specialist Megan Adams at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, who bear witness to the horrible daily struggles most of us don’t see and don’t want to see, dedicating their time and energy to healing and helping our rural neighbors who need help the most. Sometimes it’s finding the right mix of therapy and medicine for someone with emotional trauma and physical addiction; sometimes it’s simply holding someone’s hand who doesn’t know what to do. For Daisy and Megan and their colleagues, it is an all-the-time way of life.
These people are heroes — nurses who became the last human face as folks passed away from Covid in isolated hospital rooms; tireless technicians who handled thousands and thousands of tests and processing; doctors who moved from one hospital bed to another, day after day, night after night.
They risked their lives, supported their teams and were there for all of us. To see them at work and know what they’ve had to endure stirs in me deep, intense feelings of gratitude, respect and reverence.
We should all be learning their names, thanking them for their service, and letting them know we owe them a debt of gratitude.