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January 19, 2021

The Chestertown Spy

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Health Health Portal Lead Spy Highlights

Character Counts Announces Closure – New Program on the Horizon

December 23, 2020 by The Spy Leave a Comment

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Character Counts Mid Shore’s Board of Directors is announcing the closure of the organization, effective December 31, 2020. During the course of the organization’s 23 years, Character Counts Mid Shore provided character education lessons to thousands of PreK – Grade 12 youth throughout Talbot, Caroline, and Dorchester Counties. As the Board of Directors considered the best path forward to serve the community’s youth, it was clear that now is the right moment to close Character Counts Mid Shore’s doors and give way to new comprehensive programming. For All Seasons, a nonprofit serving the mental health needs of the community, is well-positioned to re-envision and deliver evidence-informed programming that develops the necessary skills youth need to become healthy, productive, and resilient members of the Mid-Shore community.

“2020’s unprecedented nature offered our leadership team a unique opportunity to examine Character Counts Mid Shore’s programs,” says Richard Potter, President of Character Counts Mid Shore’s Board of Directors. “We emerged from this period of research, community dialogue, and reflection with a research-backed belief that character education is most effective as one component of a multi-pronged whole-child strategy. In the end, we made the strategic decision to close Character Counts Mid Shore with the understanding that a new program will be developed at our community’s leading mental health organization, For All Seasons.”

Established in 1998, Character Counts Mid Shore was the local affiliate of the national Character Counts! program. The organization’s Winners Walk Tall program has focused on the Six Pillars of Character, which are Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Citizenship, and Caring. Since the organization’s inception, the program remained largely unchanged, even as the challenges facing young people became increasingly more complex. The decision to close Character Counts Mid Shore’s doors paves the path for the development of entirely new, responsive, and uniquely local programming at For All Seasons.

Bill Allen, Supervisor of Caroline County Public School’s Pupil Services and member of Character Counts Mid Shore’s Board shares, “This strategic decision was made knowing that the resulting programming at For All Seasons will be something positive and synergistic for our kids and our community. What a powerful investment for improving the well-being of students… This is an exciting time!”

“Hundreds of leaders in our community have volunteered as Character Coaches over our 23 years,” reflects Lauren Kay Weber, Executive Director. “Their investment of time, energy, passion, and learned wisdom have transformed the lives of our community’s youth. They can never be thanked enough for all they have done to benefit young people and to build future citizens of character.”

The Spy spoke to both Lauren Kay Weber and For All Seasons’ Beth Anne Langrell about these changes last week.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about For All Seasons please go here.

Filed Under: Health Portal Lead, Spy Highlights

End of Life Conversations by Dot Mayorga

December 21, 2020 by Dot Mayorga Leave a Comment

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There is a notion that “end of life” means imminent death. But for most of us, death does not happen abruptly. Whether related to age or disease, a person’s ability to maintain activities of daily living usually declines over time. This could happen over years, months, or weeks. Each time period requires adaptation of the new normal.

If a person hasn’t taken time to think about and discuss these changes, the reaction is often to deny the change and fight to regain the old normal. This sets them up for pain and suffering because they can’t go back to their previous state indefinitely. There are resources available to help make these adjustments easier. 

Doctors & Clergy Members

When planning to discuss health and major life decisions, many people reach out to their healthcare provider or religious/spiritual advisor. But these professionals may be ill-equipped to counsel on end of life. Healthcare providers work in a system devised to keep people healthy, to maintain optimal functioning. Although advances have been made, there is still a level of discomfort surrounding the discussion of death. Many providers don’t know how to guide patients through end of life.

Religious and spiritual advisors help direct people to live a good life, teaching them how to assure a place in heaven or receive some other reward. Sadly, for some, their education didn’t include training about how to help people find peace and satisfaction at the end of their life.

How much is too much?

With a lack of resources for a meaningful dialogue about an end of life plan, another issue arises: over-treatment.

Over-treatment in the United States has become the standard of care. In her book, Finish Strong, author Barbara Coombs Lee, healthcare clinician, policy maker, advocate and president of Compassion and Choices outlines six reasons for over-treatment.

  1. Financial gain. The main reason for over-treatment in the US is the current fee-for-service model. Providers are paid to perform tests, procedures and surgeries, not to cure disease or maintain health. It is not a matter of greed or conspiracy on the part of the provider. It is the inevitable result of this type of system.
  2. Providers are reluctant to deliver bad news. Providers may feel a personal sense of failure when explaining that treatments aren’t working. This often prompts them to suggest other treatments. These treatments often lead to a decrease in the person’s quality of life or may inadvertently shorten their life because of side effects. When more technology is introduced into patient care, hands-on medicine decreases. The farther away a provider gets from the patient, the less comfortable they are looking the person in the eye to tell them that their life is ending. Studies reveal that healthcare providers experience feelings of profound grief, sadness, self doubt, failure and powerlessness when treatments fail and death is inevitable.

  3. Patient and family expectations. There is a notion that we can abuse our bodies for a lifetime with poor diet, dangerous behaviors, addictions, lack of exercise, and expect — almost demand — that our doctor fix us with a magic pill or a silver-lining procedure or surgery. These do not exist but that doesn’t stop patients and families from imploring providers to “do everything you can,” “try something else,” or “spare no expense.”

Providers are not magicians and they certainly are not God. There is a limit to what the body can tolerate. We all come with an expiration date. The sad part about “doing everything” is that the majority of the time, the intervention causes pain and suffering. It robs the patient of enjoyment and quality time to say important things while loving those around them. In trying to save them, the precious time they have left is stolen.

  1. Technology. In our country, many people think that just because technology is available, it must be used. When a patient hears that there is another machine available to perform a different test or procedure, they want to use it. That is not an inherently bad thing. The problem arises when no one questions why it’s being used, what the potential outcome is going to be, and if it may lead to further tests and procedures. Every case is different but this should be discussed at a level that the patient and family can understand.

  2. Fear of lawsuits. A national physicians survey conducted in 2010 by Jackson Healthcare found that 73% of doctors say they order more tests, procedures, and treatments than are medically necessary in an effort to prevent lawsuits. Providers would rather do more than be accused of not doing enough. They don’t want to risk a lawsuit and an accusation of malpractice. According to a 2014 Gallup poll of healthcare executives, the financial impact of defensive medicine is about $650 – $850B a year.

  3. Palliative care/hospice care equals giving up. Our current system requires a patient to stop curative treatment in order to receive hospice care. The main focus in both palliative and hospice care is comfort. Palliative care (treatments aimed at providing comfort and quality of life) can co-exist with curative care but Medicare does not pay for it, at least not yet. Hospice care requires an end to most curative treatments with a few exceptions and Medicare pays for it. 

Studies prove the benefit of a dual approach to patient care. In a 2010 study, 151 cancer patients were randomly assigned to standard treatments alone or standard treatments with early access to comfort care. The group that was given both standard and palliative care as their disease progressed was less likely to choose aggressive treatment such as 3rd and 4th rounds of chemotherapy or admission to the ICU. They actually lived an average of three months longer than the standard group and they reported better quality of life.

Start the conversation with these documents.

There are resources available to help you have important conversations and create legal documents detailing your end of life wishes. You can find these documents online or obtain them from your local hospital or hospice provider.

Five Wishes. This is a legal document that helps people consider and document how they want to be cared for at the end of life. It states what life-sustaining treatment the person desires as well as what they don’t want. It names the person who will make decisions when they are no longer able. It also documents how and where they die. For example, they may wish to die at home with their favorite music playing and a special aromatherapy scent in the air. The document lists who you want to be present at the time of death. People may write their own obituary and dictate what their funeral or body disposition plans are. This form needs to be signed by two witnesses who are over 18 years old and will not benefit from the person’s death. 

MOLST: The Maryland Order of Life-Sustaining Treatment. This is a legal document and a physician’s order signed by a medical provider. Most people discuss this with their primary care provider and have them sign it, but it can be signed by any licensed provider. It details what life-sustaining treatment and procedures you want and those you don’t. It identifies your decision maker when you are no longer capable of making the decisions. This document is different because it is a signed order and it only addresses medical issues.

Keep the completed document in a safe place in your home. Some people keep it in the freezer in a Ziploc bag so that if you need transport by EMT to hospital, the document is there and first responders can be made aware of your wishes. Without a MOLST, by law, healthcare providers must do everything possible to keep you alive even if that isn’t what you want. 

Advanced Directive. This legal document states your end of life medical wishes and names your decision maker. There is a section for funeral and after-death body disposition plans. This document needs to be signed by two witnesses over 18 who will not benefit from your death.

Legal Documents Protect You

All of these resources are legal documents. Only the MOLST is a signed order by a medical provider and must be followed. It is the only document that EMT responders will adhere to because in most emergencies there is no time to debate the meaning of a statement. 

Make multiple copies and give them to your medical provider, your family members, your decision maker (healthcare proxy), hospital, nursing home, and back-up decision maker.

Update the documents periodically to reflect your current condition and your feelings about the types of intervention you desire. It’s important to remember that these documents ONLY come in to play when you are no longer capable of speaking for yourself. You can change your mind and submit a new document at any time. Make sure to give healthcare providers the updated version.

To learn more about end of life planning, check out The Conversation Project, Compassion and Choices and Respecting Choices. To talk with an experienced hospice nurse, contact me at Connecting the Dots in Healthcare at 443-786-0873 or email dorothyamayorga@gmail.com.

Dot Mayorga has been a nurse over 20 years serving the residents in Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot and Queen Aanes counties. She has worked as a medical- surgical nurse in Easton Memorial Hospital, a case manager Home Health, Hospice nurse with Shore Health, and Wound Care nurse with Shore Regional Health System. She currently is a triage nurse with Choptank Community Health Services.

 

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Portal Lead

The COVID Third Wave: New At-Home Tests Could Help Keep You Safe

November 16, 2020 by Al Hammond Leave a Comment

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The combination of colder weather, more indoor living, and widespread exhaustion with preventive measures such as masks and social distancing is fueling an explosive third wave of the virus. Infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising very rapidly across the U.S. So far, however, the Eastern Shore is a pretty safe place to be. Compared to North Dakota’s incidence of 171 cases per 100,000 people (highest in the U.S.), Maryland overall has just 24 cases/100k as of November 14. The Mid-Shore counties were lower still: Queen Anne 16.7; Kent 11; Caroline 10.3; Talbot 8.1 (all per 100k of population).  Because populations are small, these numbers don’t translate into lots of cases: Kent, for example, is seeing about 2 new cases a day.  

Still, things are likely to get considerably worse nationally over the next several months, if medical experts like Dr. Fauci are right. Numbers of new infections are rising even on the Eastern Shore. And vaccines won’t be available for most people until sometime next spring or summer, because health workers and first responders and possibly nursing home residents or other extremely vulnerable people are likely to have first priority. So the pandemic will likely get much worse before it gets better. To complicate matters, it’s also flu season, with overlapping symptoms making it initially hard to know what a fever or congested breathing really mean. As a result, gathering the family for Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays or New Year’s celebrations comes with higher risks—especially if some of those gathering come from places with higher Covid prevalence. 

The good news is that testing is both more available and, soon, more convenient—even something you can do yourself at home, quickly and privately, like a pregnancy test. There are several kinds of tests, which differ in what they measure, accuracy, speed of results, and costs. So let’s sort them out and clarify the technical terms:

  • PCR test, which stands for polymerase chain reaction, is the gold standard for covid testing. It make millions of copies of any virus genetic material found in a test sample (usually collected with a nasal swab), allowing it to be sequenced and identified. The testing process, however, requires sophisticated laboratory equipment and usually takes several days for the sample to be sent to a lab and analyzed. It’s not cheap if you have to pay for it yourself.
  • Antibody tests, which are blood proteins generated by your body’s immune system to defend against a virus infection. However, it usually takes several weeks after infection for detectable levels of covid antibodies to show up in your blood, so while this test can confirm that you were infected, it’s not useful to detect a live infection, especially early on when a person is most likely to spread the disease to another. 
  • Antigen tests, which detect a viral particle or other foreign agent that can stimulate an immune response. These tests are inexpensive, can be analyzed very rapidly, and do not require complex laboratory equipment, but they have lower accuracy than PCR tests. Nonetheless, they are especially useful in the early days of an infection, and for testing people who are infected but have no symptoms. 

Several companies including major laboratory chains like Quest will send you a sample collection kit for a PCR test, which you collect at home and mail to the laboratory for testing; but it takes several days and may not be covered by insurance. Public health agencies also offer PCR tests. More convenient are rapid Antigen tests that give answers in about 15 minutes being manufactured by major companies such as Abbott and Roche. Antigen test kits for use at home by smaller companies such as Cellex and Orasure are still in process of being certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; they will give you an immediate result and promise to be inexpensive. In principle, family members gathering for a holiday or business colleagues that wanted a face-to-face meeting could pre-test themselves, providing an additional layer of safety. These are also useful for healthcare workers, or for student populations, that need to be tested frequently.

But tests aside, the core measures to protect yourself and your loved ones remain the behavioral safety measures: wear masks, avoid crowded indoor situations, wash your hands.  

Al Hammond was trained as a scientist (Stanford, Harvard) but became a distinguished science journalist, reporting for Science (a leading scientific journal) and many other technical and popular magazines and on a daily radio program for CBS. He subsequently founded and served as editor-in-chief for 4 national science-related publications as well as editor-in-chief for the United Nation’s bi-annual environmental report. More recently, he has written, edited, or contributed to many national assessments of scientific research for federal science agencies. Dr. Hammond makes his home in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

 

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Portal Lead

COVID-19 on the Shore after Eight Months with Dr. William Huffner

October 27, 2020 by Dave Wheelan Leave a Comment

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The last time the Spy sat down with Dr. William Huffner, UM Shore Regional Health’s chief medical officer, was March 13 of this year. While the country was waking up to the severe threat of COVID-19, it was also before Governor Larry Hogan would issue his “stay-at-home” order for the state of Maryland, and before any cases of coronavirus had been reported on the Mid-Shore.

Since that afternoon in mid-March, the Mid-Shore has had approximately 3,290 cases of COVID and 80 deaths related to the pandemic. It has been a trying time for Dr. Huffner and his colleagues, but as he notes in our most recent interview, he is incredibly proud of the way Shore Regional Health has been able to perform during the crisis. In particular, Huffner stresses that Shore was at a significant advantage, given its relationship with the University of Maryland Medical System with its network of specialists and access to equipment and personal protection.

And while Dr. Huffner has been pleased with his team’s response so far, he is the first to say that the Mid-Shore is not out of the woods. With the arrival of colder weather and evidence that points to a new surge in local cases, vigilance, including social distancing, mask-wearing, and hands-washing, are the essential tools to limit the community’s exposure over the next several months as the world waits for a vaccine in 2021.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Shore Regional Health and COVID information please go here.

 

 

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Homepage Highlights, Health Portal Lead, News Homepage, News Portal Lead

Topping Off at UM Shore Medical Campus at Cambridge Marks Milestone

October 15, 2020 by Spy Desk Leave a Comment

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The “topping off” of University of Maryland Shore Medical Campus at Cambridge on Monday, September 20, 2020 marked an important milestone in the construction progress for UM Shore Regional Health’s state of the art, freestanding medical facility that will serve Dorchester County and the surrounding area. While the COVID-19 pandemic precluded a traditional public celebration for the topping off, during the previous week, an open house invitation from UM Shore Regional Health to the community enabled scores of community leaders and local residents to come to the construction site to sign the facility’s top beam before it was lifted into place.

On schedule for construction completion in summer 2021 with an opening date scheduled for mid-September, the new UM Shore Medical Campus, located at Cambridge Marketplace on Route 50 at Woods Road, will house a 39,000 square foot emergency care center with an adjacent helipad and a wide array of outpatient care, including physician offices, diagnostic and rehabilitation services, to the citizens of Dorchester County.

According to UM SRH President and CEO Ken Kozel, the Cambridge project is the culmination of intensive collaboration between health care leaders, local community members, state and county government officials and physicians. “I am so grateful to everyone who has worked with UM Shore Regional Health and University of Maryland Medical System to help us make our vision for the future of health care in Dorchester County come to life,” he said.

Keith McMahan, UM SRH Board chair, noted that UM Shore Medical Campus at Cambridge is the latest in a series of major health care facility construction and renovation projects dating back to 2010. These include UM Shore Emergency Center at Queenstown, UM Shore Medical Center at Chestertown Emergency Department, the Clark Comprehensive Breast Center and the Diagnostic and Imaging Center, and UM Shore Medical Pavilions at Cambridge, Chestertown, Denton and Easton.

“Now it is Dorchester County’s turn, as we celebrate the real progress being made in the construction of University of Maryland Shore Medical Campus at Cambridge,” said McMahan. “The completion of the of this comprehensive, state of the art health care facility will further realize Shore Regional Health’s goal of providing quality health care, close to home, for residents of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties.”

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Portal Lead

A Different Kind of Community Sing-along: For All Seasons Presents “Be a Light” to Help Cover Crisis Consulting

October 3, 2020 by The Spy Leave a Comment

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To give one a scale of the Mid-Shore mental health crisis since COVID-19 arrived, For All Seasons, the region’s largest agency devoted to providing support services for those victims, has had over 650 new clients since March 1. That’s a shocking number by any standard, but it is overwhelming at a time when grants and other government funding programs are being cut or eliminated altogether.  

Given these circumstances, For All Seasons has become even more creative in finding financial support to cover this extra caseload. In keeping with its tradition of engaging the region’s most talented performers to help support its mission, the organization turned to local musician Ray Remesch to produce a new video that brings together thirty members of the community to sing the hit song “Be A Light” made famous this year with a rendition by Keith Urban, Chris Tomlin, Hillary Scott & Reba McEntire.

The Spy talked to Beth Anne Langrell, CEO of For All Seasons, last Friday about the project, which will premiere on October 7, at 7 PM on Facebook, which is part of their annual You Matter Suicide Prevention Campaign.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. To make a donation prior to the event please go here.  For All Seasons Facebook page can be reached here.

 

Filed Under: Health Portal Lead, Spy Chats, Spy Highlights

John Winslow: Turning the World Purple One Day at a Time

September 7, 2020 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

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By September 30, John Winslow wants to celebrate recovery by turning the world purple from Niagara Falls to the Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin and your porchlight. He’s doing it one day at a time throughout September, leading up to International Recovery Day on September 30.

Winslow’s lifelong career in the addiction recovery movement has prepared him for this endeavor. He was former President of the Maryland Addiction Directors Council, former Founder and Director of Dri-Dock Recovery and Wellness Center, Former Director of Addictions and Co-Occurring Services at Dorchester Health Department, and former Coordinator; Recovery Leadership Program at the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD-MD).

If that’s not enough, the life-long Eastern Shore resident founded International Recovery Day to seek worldwide awareness about addiction recovery no matter the pathway to recovery one might be taking.

Winslow cites the 2014 The Anonymous People movie and recovery movement as his inspiration to take the addiction recovery movement to an international level and specifically include all recovery pathways from 12-step programs to other individualized therapies. It’s a message of inclusion, what Winslow calls a “We” celebration of recovery that expands The Anonymous People’s mission to destigmatize addiction.

As Winslow formed his idea of an International Recovery Day, he reached out to Greg Williams, Founder of The Anonymous People, and the esteemed addiction historian William White, author of Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America. Both saw the transformative value of international networking. Williams joined the Steering Committee along with 28 members from the United States, Scotland, Malaysia, Australia, Ireland, Nigeria, Ghana, and Canada to guide the non-profit through its inaugural year.

Signing up at The International Recovery Day website or Facebook page will let registrants participate in the online event on September 30. Recovery fireworks will go off in the digital globe, symbolizing worldwide interconnectivity.

In the meantime, each day, additional key worldwide monuments and structures will become purple.

The International Recovery Day Project couldn’t come at a better time. All of September is National Recovery Month, an annual observance” to educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with mental and substance use disorders to live healthy and rewarding lives. Winslow wants to catapult recovery awareness into the community of the world.

And then there’s the global pandemic. Already, data reveals that US overdose deaths, which had begun to drop, are now up 5% from the 69,000+ recorded in 2019 as the consequences of isolation, treatment center closures and wide availability of fentanyl and heroin are playing out.

With the addition of purple-lighted awareness, however, the recovery movement and addiction awareness get an added boost as it become an annual celebration of addiction recovery.

International Recovery Day is a free online event launched globally during September and a special online event on September 30.

The Spy talked with John Winslow about it via Zoom. The conversation begins with how the Anonymous People movement moved the 12-step recovery programs into public recognition and how International Recovery Day will move the recovery movement forward and worldwide.

The video is approximately six minutes long.

Filed Under: Health Portal Lead, Spy Chat, Spy Top Story

Senior Nation: Ending the Stigma of Alzheimer’s Disease with Cynthia Prud’homme

August 1, 2020 by The Spy Leave a Comment

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One would think that after decades of public awareness campaigns, the stigma of Alzheimer’s Disease, and dementia in general, would finally come to an end in American society, but the fact remains that we have miles to go for victims and their families in accepting this brutal illness.

While groups like the Alzheimer’s Association in Maryland have certainly made some progress in ending this pattern of denial, the fact remains that over 100,000 Marylanders suffer from its horrific condition, and almost 1,200 die each year as a result. With earlier detection and early treatment, those numbers might have been very different.

To catch up on Alzheimer’s in Maryland, the Spy turned to Cynthia Prud’homme, an education coordinator for the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Maryland Chapter based in Easton, for an update and resources to help those families at the earliest signs of dementia.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about Alzheimer’s cognitive decline please go here

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Portal Lead

Memo to U.S.A.: COVID-19 is Global with Dr. Mark Dybul

July 27, 2020 by James Dissette 1 Comment

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One of the wonders of the Chesapeake Bay region, be it Annapolis, Chestertown or Talbot County, is that it’s not unusual to find a leading expert in almost any field just around the block, so to speak. With close proximity to Washington, D.C. these communities have found themselves attracting the best and the brightest for decades.

So it wasn’t too surprising to find one of the country’s leading experts in infectious diseases who so happens to make his home just outside of Chestertown.

For more than thirty years, Dr. Mark Dybul has been in the forefront of some of the world’s most dangerous pandemics. Starting with his early work with AIDS in the 1980s, when he became a colleague and friend with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dybul has helped lead global efforts to defeat such dangerous diseases, as SARE, Ebola, MERS, and H1N1, just to name a few.

He’s the former Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria and is now Faculty Co-Director of the Center of Global Health Quality and Professor in the Department of Medicine, Georgetown Medical Center.

Earlier in his career, he joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci on clinical studies on HIV virology, immunology, and treatment, which led the first controlled trials using antiviral therapies in Africa and effort that helped save 17 million lives. Dr. Fauci continues to be his mentor and colleague, and the two discuss weekly the implementation of a plan to control the virus worldwide.

“A global pandemic requires a global response; solidarity,” Dybul says. “When AIDS hit, no one knew what to do, but we became aware that we are a more connected world.”

Dybul has been interviewed widely and always expresses his mission to help create a global template to deal not only with COVID-19 but pandemics to come

In a recent interview in One— a global movement campaigning to end extreme poverty and preventable disease—he was asked about the US response to the global pandemic. “If the virus is lurking anywhere in the world, we are at risk. If we are not engaged and don’t know the patterns of transmission, we are in deep trouble; we are flying blind into a future we have no sense of. Flying blind is incredibly dangerous.”

But Dybul is not without optimism, despite the uncoordinated US effort to contain the virus. He says it’s not “rocket science.” If we look to European countries, we can see that it controlling the transmission of the virus can be accomplished within months if we follow the recommended protocols of wearing masks, social distancing, contact tracing, and quarantining. But it takes a unified effort, and the fortitude to carry through.

This video is approximately fourteen minutes in length. For more information about the Center of Global Health Quality please go here.

Now available in podcast format.

Filed Under: Health Portal Lead, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story, Top Story

Shore Regional Health Appoints Arvin Singh VP for Communications

July 6, 2020 by UM Shore Regional Health Leave a Comment

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Arvin Singh, MHL, MBA, MPH has joined University of Maryland Shore Regional Health as vice president, Strategy & Communications, effective July 6, 2020.

Singh comes to UM SRH after two years as chief operating officer (COO) for Odyssey House Louisiana, a provider network affiliate of the Louisiana State University Health System that provides behavioral health care and addiction treatment, serving more than 2,000 patients monthly as the largest addiction treatment center in Louisiana. In that capacity, he oversaw more than 350 inpatient beds and an array of residential treatment centers, federally qualified health centers, intensive outpatient programs, sober living centers and detox centers.

Prior to that position, Singh worked at Johns Hopkins Health System leading Lean & Six Sigma and population health based initiatives – transforming patient transportation and care delivery. From 2011-2016 he served in the Federal Government, including roles at the White House, Pentagon, Health and Human Services and the U.S. House of Representatives, in which he impacted health policy, operations and legislation on a national scale.

Singh hold master’s degrees from Brown University in Health Care Leadership (MHL), Penn State in Business Administration (MBA), and George Washington University in Public Health (MPH). In addition, he received his Lean & Six Sigma Green Belt from Johns Hopkins Health System and holds a Master’s Certificate in Negotiation Mastery from Harvard University. He is currently pursuing his doctorate in Public Health.

An interesting fact about Singh, especially for chess enthusiasts: He was a State Chess Champion in the State of Indiana, won 2nd in the world in a Team Chess Tournament (losing to Israel, with an opportunity to play Garry Kasparov) and a U.S. National U1800 Chess Champion.

Filed Under: Health Homepage, Health Portal Lead

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