I’m Brad Dreifuss–Emergency Medicine Physician, father, husband.
Last March, my wife, Heather, and I watched with alarm as the pandemic began to sweep across the world like wildfire. We realized that our healthcare system, workforce, and our family would need help to get through what was coming.
We also knew that most members of the healthcare team would need even more support than we do. I can’t do my job without the environmental services workers, respiratory therapists, nurses, unit clerks–all the members of our teams who make taking care of patients and ensuring the health and well-being of our community possible.
To support those workers and families, we co-founded HCW HOSTED with a cross-disciplinary team of concerned professionals and dedicated Tucson leaders.
Almost a year later, we have been able to provide services to almost 200 healthcare workers in Tucson, where we are based. Our Epidemiology and Medical Anthropology Team has continually reviewed and summarized the overwhelming amount of COVID-19 information, distilling it into accurate reference guides for public and professional use. We continue to advocate for healthcare workers by sharing their stories, memorializing the dead, rallying the public through the Health Citizen Pledge, and speaking out through media outlets.
In our first quarterly newsletter, you can find out more about all of those projects and hear stories from our frontline healthcare staff–and begin to find out a bit about our plans to continue to support healthcare workers and their families through this pandemic and beyond. If you would like to receive future newsletters, you can sign up for our mailing list. We promise to be gentle on your inbox!
This past year has been a year of playing catch-up–trying to prevent a fire that was already burning out of control, seeing what was coming and sounding the alarm. The stress, anxiety, trauma, disease, and death that has torn through our healthcare workforce like an out-of-control wildfire during the COVID-19 pandemic should never have happened.
As much as we have already accomplished in our first year, our real goal is to help our healthcare system move from putting out fires to preventing fires, to build new tools and systems that foster a higher level of resilience in our healthcare workforce so that we are ready for the next crisis. I’ll have more updates for you on that undertaking in our next newsletter.
I’m glad you’re here. Your support means everything to my family and to the HCW HOSTED Board of Directors and team.
