Geher Blog 4 – Personal Contributions

As my fourth week comes to a close, I think that it is appropriate to take time to reflect on work that I have completed so far, and the different processes and projects which I have been involved with here so far. I have gotten the opportunity to work on many different projects and jobs here, most significantly being the myriad of COVID-19 Vaccine PODs which I have gone to and assisted the team at. At these PODs, I have typically had one of two different jobs: outreach and registration. At these vaccine PODs and other events, there are many community members who are lower income and have less access to public health resources. We have a table for outreach at many of the events to try to disperse resources of all sorts to the community members in need, such as mental health resources such as hotline numbers and informative pamphlets, tick kits to remove ticks as well as more information on tick-borne disease, as this is a significant issue here, especially with populations who often work outside, as well as children’s books in multiple languages for those who would not necessarily be able to access these educational resources otherwise. At many of these PODs, I work at the outreach table, trying to reach as many community members as possible to provide them with these free and helpful resources. The other job which I often have at these events is registering those who are being vaccinated by inputting their into the system and signing them up for a second vaccine appointment, if necessary. This is crucial to the process, as individuals need to be entered into the Health Commerce System when being vaccinated. I believe that my insights about leadership have further helped to enhance these vaccine PODs as I think that this has helped me to better understand how to best reach the community members with our outreach programs and resources. It is fundamental for this role that I understand the populations who we are trying to reach and how to best reach them to most effectively distribute our resources, as well as being able to effectively field questions about the COVID-19 vaccine from community members. I think that my understanding of group dynamics, as I have learned from my education in leadership thus far, has helped me to most effectively manage these events and specifically my role as outreach in the community.