Pandemic Responce
NYACH has continued to support healthcare workers throughout COVID-19, inspired by their unwavering dedication in the face of tremendous personal risk and emotional stress.
Since March 2020, we have built upon our history to serve as a meeting place for stakeholders, a crisis operations manager, a subject matter expert, and as a translator helping to bring the urgent voice of exhausted workers and businesses to government and the wider public.
Long-term Care in Crisis
In the early days of the pandemic, relatively little support went to the long-term services and supports (LTSS) subsector, which includes nursing homes, homecare, and care for those with disabilities, despite their tremendous need.
Understandably so, the lion’s share of attention and resources was going to address hospital capacity and supply chain issues in early March 2020. But after hearing from partners, NYACH immediately launched a LTSS emergency response group, bringing a diverse coalition of government and industry stakeholders together to address the crisis.
The LTSS emergency workgroup led to innovative collaborations and resource sharing to support the more than 350,000 direct care workers who continued to care for the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Notable workgroup successes included successful PPE distribution efforts, multiple emergency workforce programs, and advocating for the recognition of these workers and businesses in media and resource allocation, including their inclusion in early vaccine eligibility.
Above all, the workgroup served as one of the only places where LTSS stakeholders felt seen and respected by the government, providing a place to build cooperative solutions to common problems.
Read more about our LTSS emergency work in our 10-Year Anniversary Report, and in our 2020 industry brief: NYC COVID-19 Emergency Response in Long Term Services and Supports.
Emergency Operations
NYACH led and supported a range of crisis management projects throughout the pandemic, bringing our expertise and experience to an unprecedented moment of public-private collaboration.
Since the first days of the pandemic, NYACH was involved in surge staffing planning for local hospitals and nursing homes, connecting healthcare to local PPE manufacturing businesses, and supporting the contact tracing and resource navigation programs launched by City government.
In early 2021 the Mayor committed to hiring 2,000 New Yorkers from the neighborhoods hit hardest by COVID-19 to work in vaccine distribution through the Vaccine for All Corps. NYACH was immediately enlisted by the City’s Vaccine Command Center to design and operationalize the recruitment and training of these workers, and to design downstream pipeline programs where this workforce could continue caring for NYC communities beyond the short-term need for vaccine distribution staff.
Alongside partners from SBS, NYCEM, and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), we launched this new jobs program, stood up equity-focused local recruitment efforts, supported onboarding training, led communications and community outreach, and supported ongoing operations throughout 2021. This infrastructure delivered a new, essential, well-paid, community-sourced workforce of clinical and non-clinical workers to administer thousands of vaccine doses to New Yorkers each day.
As vaccine distribution work waned with public demand, NYACH built upon our expertise in emerging healthcare occupations to design a Community Health Worker apprenticeship program with DOHMH that created a pathway for hundreds of Vaccine for All Corps members to transition to jobs at dozens of community-based organizations as part of the City’s new Public Health Corps.
Adapting Existing Programs
Beyond our new emergency work, NYACH also doubled down on our pre-existing programs, whose value took on a new importance in the face of the public health emergency. NYACH successfully pivoted and virtualized our portfolio of programs, including those supporting hospital-based nurses and high school students, ensuring good outcomes despite widespread disruption.
Read more about all of our emergency work in our 10-Year Anniversary Report.