Editor’s note: This commentary is by Anne N. Sosin, who is program director for the Dartmouth Center for Global Health Equity.
By many indicators, Vermont is the state best poised to open its college campuses. The state’s Covid-19 incidence is the lowest in the nation and its test positivity rate of 0.6% is well below school and campus reopening thresholds of 3-5%. Experts have praised its comprehensive, statewide approach to reopening its campuses and its investments in rigorous testing. Yet, many fear that returning students will seed infection, and its largest public university has found itself embroiled in town-gown tension over its reopening plans. Holding campuses accountable for the enforcement of student compliance with public health measures represents a priority in a state that has worked hard to achieve success in containing Covid-19. Yet, Vermont campus and community leaders must both go further and recognize the unique opportunity to apply the principles that contributed to this success in their approach to campus reopening.
Early in the pandemic, our team from Dartmouth launched research to understand Covid-19 and rural health equity in Northern New England. Like many, we feared that even a small number of cases would overwhelm rural health systems and threaten communities. We worried that New Yorkers fleeing the largest global outbreak would infect our older rural populations and collapse our rural hospitals. Months later, our research instead highlighted the actions that contributed to low infection rates and documented lessons for other regions struggling to contain their epidemics.
If we did not foresee the success of the region, we also didn’t expect the impact that our research would have on the team of undergraduate students that joined us in this work. Students conducted outreach to partners across the region, participated in research interviews, analyzed data, and assisted in the preparation of presentations for legislators and community stakeholders. They heard firsthand about the extraordinary efforts that contributed to the low infection rates of the region, the preparations of our region’s small rural hospitals and health centers to receive Covid-19 patients, and the mobilization of rural communities to protect their most vulnerable Vermonters. Our students expressed awe at the ingenuity, pragmatism, and compassion they saw in Vermont’s leaders and citizens. At the same time, they, like us, struggle to reconcile the Herculean efforts they saw to protect rural populations and the significant racial disparities in health outcomes in both states.
As they return to campus, our students are invested in sustaining this hard-won success in our region. They have initiated their own research to identify strategies to optimize compliance among their own peers and launched peer outreach efforts. Inspired by this work, have published their own opinion pieces in national media calling upon their peers to lead pandemic response efforts.
Communities and universities have expended significant resources preparing for the return of students, and news of swelling campus epidemics elsewhere incites concern in all of us. Yet, communities and universities in Vermont must see their mission of protecting communities and educating our students as a shared one. Students can learn from our state’s challenges through virtual seminars with our leaders, research, and internships, support food assistance and other local efforts, and join peer public health efforts on campus. Those of us who work as leaders and educators across the state must come together to engage our students in our work and model academic-community partnership.
Most of all, we must call upon our students’ better instincts and support them to succeed during the pandemic. Fatigued with months of social distancing ourselves, we must adopt the discourse of empathy and solidarity that was central to our own success as a state, rather than resorting to shame and blame, as we seek to maintain adherence with stringent public health measures.
Our students not only see themselves as motivated to protect communities in the region, they see themselves as part of them. Many of our internationally minded students came to our research as an alternative to global health work. Through it, some began to imagine a future for themselves in our rural region. Pre-health students who never envisioned a care in rural medicine express interest in working in primary care. Others see future roles for themselves in broadband expansion, clean energy, and agriculture. As Vermont confronts population decline and an aging demographic, their experience highlights the opportunity to cultivate a generation of leaders deeply committed to our rural state.
In Vermont, our students saw a vision of what is possible when institutions and communities come together to address a common challenge. We must now apply the lessons from the state to our efforts to reopen our campuses during the pandemic and build a more equitable and thriving state after it.
