Two New Jersey students spend their days in quarantine attending several hours’ worth of virtual classes and lectures, and completing several more hours’ worth of assignments in pursuit of degrees in medicine.
And, while "taking breaks” from their work, they coordinate the volunteer efforts of nearly 200 health professions students across the state for local hospitals, public health departments, health-associated not-for-profits, and nursing facilities.
These students are Akarsh Sharma and Ayush Parikh, the New Jersey State Coordinators for the National Student Response Network, an initiative created in response to the coronavirus pandemic to field the volunteer needs of healthcare facilities and local governments by matching them with students in their local communities.
The network is comprised of over 5,400 volunteers across all 50 states, each of whom are students currently pursuing medical, osteopathic, nursing, or physician assistant degrees. At present, 189 of these volunteers are based in New Jersey, including Sharma, a first-year student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City, who decided to return to his residence in Chesterfield after believing he could potentially do more there than in the city.
Akarsh Sharma, N.J. State CoordinatorCourtesy — Akarsh Sharma
“I can help out at Sinai with volunteer efforts, but then at home I really wouldn’t be very connected,” Sharma said. “There’s not too many hospitals near me, so I didn’t really have a clear idea of how I can help out. And being that this was a healthcare crisis, and we’re going into the medical care profession, it was definitely something that I thought I could be involved in and should be so I could get a glance at the future and what kind of challenges these things pose at a national level.”
Unlike Sharma, who learned about the initiative through another student at his school, Ayush Parikh became involved after being directly contacted by fellow first-year Harvard medical student and founder of the Network, Jalen Benson.
Ayush Parikh, NJ State CoordinatorCourtesy — Ayush Parikh
“To me, the mission of the organization really resonated with what I was doing,” Parikh, a resident of Jersey City, said. “As well as seeing the pandemic play out live at home, my parents are both nurses as well. And that sort of led me to realize that, for me, this was the role I wanted to be in to help out our local institutions and help students find ways to really give back to their communities.”
The New Jersey-based volunteers have helped to advance the mission of the network in a number of regards, including by coordinating volunteers for local county governments to help them perform COVID-19 investigations and contact tracing.
“What we realized was that while the state effort was still mobilizing, a lot of the counties were already inundated with COVID-19 cases,” Parikh said. “And some of the counties that we talked to, there was just not enough staff to cover the population in the county.”
Agencies receiving volunteer assistance from the National Student Response Network include the NorthWest and Mid Bergen Regional Health Commission, and the Ocean and Burlington County health departments.
Moreover, at present day the network is coordinating with GetUsPPE to deliver approximately 3,500 personal protective gear to various healthcare facilities across New Jersey and New York City.
“The regular means for obtaining PPE for hospitals is a slow process,” Sharma explained. “Some time next week we will be disseminating boxes of masks.”
Health professions students have also been volunteering at local food banks and for Hackensack Meridian Health, the latter of which Sharma described as “an open-ended task.”
“We provide a volunteer to the healthcare system for basically whatever they need,” Sharma said. “Whether that’s staffing at different COVID testing sites, or coordinating deliveries, or being a greeter — it’s really up to the discretion of the healthcare facility.”
Beyond their efforts for healthcare and health department employees, volunteers are virtually connecting with residents of Heartland Hospice facilities, throughout which visitation has been widely prohibited.
“Many nursing home residents and hospice care residents are unfortunately not able to see their families, and that’s a huge detriment to social contact, and social well-being.” Parikh said. “So we set up a system where volunteers can call residents on a fairly routine basis — maybe once a week or once a month, depending on their preferences.”
According to Parikh, two New Jersey volunteers are currently training with the Network’s affiliates in Massachusetts to help expand its connection to residents of longterm care facilities in the state.
At present day, exclusively health professions students can volunteer for the National Student Response Network. But, Parikh confirmed that the group intends to include students studying for additional degree programs at some point in the future.
“As the COVID-19 crisis changes, and as students’ schedules change, we are realizing that we can now — at least for our non-clinical tasks — expand to include earlier level nursing students, for example ... as well as allied healthcare professions," Parikh said. “Currently we don’t have opportunities for physical therapy students or speech pathology students, but these are some things that we hope to include.”
In spite of the Network’s founding purpose to provide relief during the pandemic, Parikh and Sharma agreed that it will likely continue to function as a source of support after the global health crisis subsides.
“Initially, our focus was the COVID-19 pandemic ... and it still is. But we’re realizing that a lot of institutions are willing to build long-term relationships with us,” Parikh said. “For example, a few of the health departments have actually asked us to stay on as volunteer members of the health department. And as they transition from a contract tracing objective to more research and development, I’m sure our students would be very, very interested in participating in that, and shift the focus ... to preventing something like this from happening again.”
“We have a great base of students ... and nationally it would be very prudent to make use of this existing base and help out as much as we can," Sharma added.
Still, neither of them anticipated the resurgence of a post-pandemic era anytime in the near future.
“This pandemic is not going to go away anytime soon. That’s just the reality of the situation," Parikh said. ”Our hospitals and community health institutions and departments are still going to need help. While we may be returning to normal life, they’ll still be working day and night. And we realize that this is where we need to sustain our volunteering and our efforts so that we can help our institutions all the way through this."
“In this kind of situation, prevention is the best strategy. So the goal would be to try to prevent the recurrent breakouts that a lot of folks have anticipated ... with a sustaining involvement with these groups," Sharma echoed.
Hospitals, volunteer organizations, state and local health departments, and other facilities in need of volunteers are encouraged to submit an online form to the National Student Response Network.
Health professions students interested in volunteering for the initiative can also sign up virtually.
Partners of the National Student Response Network include GetUsPPE, MedSupplyDrive, Miami-Med COVID Help, TULIP, and the Harvard Medical School COVID-19 Task Force.
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Caroline Fassett may be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.