Convincing Your Community: MUSC Health's Drive to Vaccinate Against COVID-19

00;00;00;18 - 00;00;40;29
Tom Haederle
In the early stages of the pandemic,challenge number one was getting enough supply of the new vaccines, and when that was achieved, communities everywhere faced challenge number two, convincing people to take them. Hear how MUSC Health in Charleston, South Carolina, set a great example by collaborating with community stakeholders in the school system and beyond to spread confidence in the COVID 19 vaccines.

00;00;41;01 - 00;01;15;23
Tom Haederle
Welcome to Advancing Health, a podcast from the American Hospital Association. I'm Tom Haederle with AHA Communications. In this new series on pediatric COVID-19 vaccine confidence, we'll hear from leaders from children's hospitals from across the country about their vaccine confidence efforts. In today's podcast, Julia Resnick, director of Strategic Initiatives at the AHA, hosts Dr. Janice Key, professor of Pediatrics and director of the Boeing Center for Children's Wellness, and Quentin Tompkins, Director of Governmental and Community Outreach, both from MUSC Health.

00;01;15;29 - 00;01;35;05
Tom Haederle
And they're joined by Ellen Nits, Director of Nursing Services for the Charleston School District. The group reviews how the hospital, school, district and other community stakeholders joined hands to keep their community safe throughout the pandemic and set the stage for an ongoing partnership. Now over to Julia.

00;01;35;07 - 00;01;55;13
Julia Resnick
Today, I'm here with representatives from two organizations in the Charleston, South Carolina area. From MUSC Health, we have Dr. Janice Key and Quentin Tompkins, and from the Charleston County School District, we have Ellen Nitz. So since you're from different organizations, can you tell us a little bit about your role in the community that you serve? Dr. Key, let's start with you.

00;01;55;16 - 00;02;27;14
Janice Key
Thank you. I am Janice Key. I'm a distinguished university professor of pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, where I'm also the director of the MUSC Boeing Center for Children's Wellness, which works with schools, about 220 schools around the state, to put in place wellness initiatives. And lastly, I'm privileged to serve as the medical advisor for our Charleston County School District.

00;02;27;16 - 00;02;30;05
Julia Resnick
Wonderful, Quentin. How about you?

00;02;30;07 - 00;03;09;14
Quentin Tompkins
I'm Quentin Tompkins. I'm the director of Governmental and Community Outreach for the Medical University of South Carolina here from the health system level. And for the past seven years, I work for MUSC. I've worked with local, state and federal elected officials. But during the pandemic, I was taken back to kind of my my roots of public health and was charged with setting up all of the testing and vaccine sites throughout the state in rural and underserved areas in all 46 counties throughout the state of South Carolina.

00;03;09;15 - 00;03;17;13
Quentin Tompkins
And so I've taken on a new role, hence the the outreach portion of of my job now.

00;03;17;15 - 00;03;19;26
Julia Resnick
So wonderful. And Ellen?

00;03;19;28 - 00;03;48;23
Ellen Nitz
Hi, I'm Ellen Nitz, I'm the director of nursing for Charleston County School District. And for those who are not familiar with our district, we serve about 50,000 children and about 6500 staff members throughout. We're a very diverse community where we span about 100 square miles. So we're large, where the second largest district within the state with a lot of different needs throughout,

00;03;48;24 - 00;04;00;16
Ellen Nitz
so in my job is making sure that I provide nursing services to all of our children and our staff, whatever those health care needs may be.

00;04;00;18 - 00;04;22;18
Julia Resnick
Wonderful and so great to have the three of you here to talk about this really important issue of how we build confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine, particularly for pediatric populations, and help people understand that it's both safe and effective. So can you describe the general attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine in your community and how it may have evolved over the past couple of years?

00;04;22;20 - 00;04;48;24
Janice Key
Well, I'll start. You know, COVID hit everybody like a unexpected sledgehammer, really. It was less effective than the typical hurricanes we have in Charleston. It was just completely felt like out of the blue and every day it seemed to change. So people were wary of what to do. People were panicked and wary about what to do. The advice evolved.

00;04;48;27 - 00;05;20;26
Janice Key
The expert advice evolved as the pandemic went on, naturally, because we learned about it as the pandemic process. So even advice about wearing a mask evolved in the very beginning. So when vaccines became available, people were in a state of like everybody had anxiety about COVID, like mass anxiety, and the vaccine seemed to come out so quickly that people were nervous about it.

00;05;20;28 - 00;05;53;01
Janice Key
I hate to say it, it's a good thing that there's such easy communication these days, but it's a bad thing because advice is not always medically, scientifically correct. So naturally, people were wondering what to do, and they didn't realize that there had been years of research about how to create this kind of vaccination that was really put in place for a big public health emergency for the first time with COVID,

00;05;53;01 - 00;06;23;02
Janice Key
but to the public, it seemed like the vaccines were developed too quickly. That's not the case. There have been about two decades of research about how to create a messenger RNA vaccination, and we were just fortunate to be able to use it for COVID. The times have changed now, I think people are becoming more accepting of vaccinations and more adjusting to this new phase that we're in, which is no longer a pandemic, but an endemic.

00;06;23;05 - 00;06;30;20
Janice Key
So I think, I'm on eternal optimist, but I think that attitudes have become more positive about vaccination.

00;06;30;22 - 00;06;55;08
Quentin Tompkins
I would agree that I think it's evolved over time. Initially, when COVID first hit us, everyone was or we can't wait to they they get a vaccine, you know we're eager to have something so this will go away. And then when we got it, there was a lot of hesitancy, as everyone knows, just because, again, I think the timing of it all, it was just too quick.

00;06;55;09 - 00;07;22;01
Quentin Tompkins
It was developed too quick in people's mind and they didn't fully understand that the technology had already been out there and the research had been done over many, many years. So being out on the front lines, out in the community, we just tried to share as much as we could about the time that had gone on or the evolution of vaccines and this particular technology over time.

00;07;22;04 - 00;07;58;07
Quentin Tompkins
Many of us were not doctors, but we we worked with our docs to get information and in the simplest form so we could share it things that we were serving out in the community, and trust me, we heard we heard it all. You know, everything from there was a microchip inside of the vaccine to it was a conspiracy to take out some of our elderly patients because we didn't need to pay Medicaid or Medicare.

00;07;58;10 - 00;08;28;15
Quentin Tompkins
I mean, there are a lot of just misinform or misinformation that was floating out there. And and so, you know, you just had to work with folks to try to put them at ease as much as possible. But then again, not forcing them, not forcing the vaccine upon them. And one of the things that I saw was, you know, many people were eager to take it as an adult, but when it came to their kids, there was a lot of second guessing there as well.

00;08;28;15 - 00;08;53;09
Quentin Tompkins
So even for my own household, I was quick to go out and take it. In all full transparency. I took some time to really think about my my kids taking it for whatever reason. It was just a natural, kind of a natural response and not to just take a second to think about my teenagers and whether I would get them vaccinated.

00;08;53;09 - 00;09;00;03
Quentin Tompkins
But, you know, that didn't last long. We went out and make sure we did the right thing with our kids.

00;09;00;05 - 00;09;37;27
Janice Key
Part of the problem with vaccinations for COVID and children is it built upon a history of vaccination hesitancy for other vaccines. And fairly recently there has been a concern that autism was caused by vaccinations, and there's been a lot of public misinformation about that. The facts are that autism is a scary disease that we don't understand and is increasing in prevalence, slowly, but it is increasing and we don't really know why.

00;09;38;00 - 00;10;18;15
Janice Key
So there was concern that it was all these vaccinations that we give to kids around the time that they get diagnosed with autism. And a very disreputable researcher actually wrote a paper about the fact. He has been totally discredited and is completely out of the scientific community now, but he is to blame for part of that. But it's been spread through the social media to other folks that we have done studies since then that have demonstrated that absolutely vaccinations do not cause autism.

00;10;18;18 - 00;10;39;12
Janice Key
But still, once the worry is out there, it's out there. It's hard to get that horse back in the barn. So there's brand new vaccination that appears to be developed very quickly with a new technology built upon that existing fear about autism and routine vaccinations.

00;10;39;15 - 00;10;50;11
Julia Resnick
Yeah, and I think for so much with the vaccinations for kids, it's all out of love and wanting to protect your kid and want to just to be sure that it was safe. Quentin I'd be curious about, like, what changed your mind?

00;10;50;14 - 00;11;16;02
Quentin Tompkins
Just researching and speaking with our health care professionals, our docs and researchers, hearing the assurance one more time from those respective individuals that, you know, they were vaccinating their kids. Here's why it's safe. I mean, you know, but you you just want to make sure you're making the right decision for your kids. It's one thing if something happens for me, happens to me.

00;11;16;04 - 00;11;43;04
Quentin Tompkins
But if I did anything for my kids, I could never really, you know, live that down. So I just wanted to make sure I had that had the right information. Is one of those things that happened a lot during COVID. You know, we were out testing early on in 2020, but I had not been tested. And, you know, I didn't have any symptoms.

00;11;43;04 - 00;12;08;17
Quentin Tompkins
And I knew some folks were asymptomatic, but early on things were worse and most folks were exhibiting symptoms. But I had not been tested. But when folks would ask me what this feel like, I needed to be able to share it out with them. So it was one of those things where, you know, I needed to be assure, be sure for myself before I can try to convince and help someone else make that decision.

00;12;08;20 - 00;12;17;08
Julia Resnick
Absolutely. And Ellen being a school nurse, I'm sure you heard from a lot of parents about their concerns, but about the vaccine. How did you respond to those concerns?

00;12;17;11 - 00;12;44;20
Ellen Nitz
We did face a lot of different anxiety levels with our families. Of course, people were scared. They were like Quentin had suggested, not only scared for themselves, but for their children. So it's a whole other level that we dealt with our families one on one with contact tracers being in the early stages. And we really had to learn to listen to people, to really hear what they were saying.

00;12;44;20 - 00;13;12;21
Ellen Nitz
And it, you know, a lot of times they would become very angry with us in different situations. But listening to them, empathizing with them, trying to make sure that they understood that we were trying to do what was best for not only their child, but for all the kids in the school. I think that we, we really grew as providers trying to make sure that we were dealing with the whole person.

00;13;12;23 - 00;13;16;26
Ellen Nitz
We also really grew in our customer service skills as well.

00;13;16;28 - 00;13;46;10
Janice Key
I was going throw this in. Our school district was one of the very few school districts that remained open during COVID. And the way we did that was this complicated plan, playbook, like a 300 page playbook that was developed by MUSC Back to Business to make our schools as safe as possible, to do a contact tracing of every case to. It was like a giant exercise in public health.

00;13;46;13 - 00;14;13;29
Janice Key
We also, the school nurses vaccinated over 7000 kids and staff in mass vaccinations. So all of that allowed us to stay open and also demonstrate that COVID wasn't spreading at school. Kids were catching COVID but outside of school, and we were circling them and diagnosing them and having them stay home when they had COVID. So it was not spreading at school.

00;14;14;01 - 00;14;24;21
Janice Key
So through all of that, we were able to keep our schools open throughout COVID, which is really important because kids suffer from not being in school.

00;14;24;24 - 00;14;43;17
Julia Resnick
That's incredible that you were able to avoid that disruption in their lives. So I want to pivot just a little bit because we have representatives here from the hospital and the school district. I'd like to hear about that partnership and how it came to be and what what you've been working on together to help improve vaccine confidence. Ellen, do you want to start?

00;14;43;19 - 00;15;22;21
Ellen Nitz
Sure. When the pandemic first began, I was working with DHEC, because as school nurses, we follow under regulations. And from there, Dr. Katie Richardson was able to start networking and introduced me to a few key people. And MUSC, of course, Doctor. Dr. Janice Key always been a wonderful support to us, but then we started working with Dr. Allison Eckard, who is the department head of Infectious Disease for Pediatrics there.

00;15;22;23 - 00;15;47;23
Ellen Nitz
And we started really working with her, helping to really address some of the concerns that we had in the school district, such as risk mitigators. Like Dr. Key suggested before we became part of the back to business program that was offered through in MUSC, that I think initially it was built for corporations and then schools, you know, joined on

00;15;47;23 - 00;16;22;09
Ellen Nitz
and we saw actually the advantages that it brought to us, having experts come out and look at individual schools, being able to provide more input to us of how we could make things safe for our staff and our students. We worked with MUSC testing at that time, making sure that we had test sites available for our families. And of course, with the contact tracing and case investigations, we did that internally, but we learned from some of the best it DHEC of how to do that.

00;16;22;09 - 00;16;52;28
Ellen Nitz
When our schools were shut down, we were working in partnership in tandem with them and then when we were able to give vaccines, that was really the enlightening, really uplifting thing during the entire pandemic, being able, MUSC, to be able to provide the staff the vaccinations to begin with. It made them feel that they were a top priority in the community and that MUSC was there to make sure that we got it.

00;16;53;00 - 00;17;15;22
Ellen Nitz
Our problem at that point was a lot of staffing and, you know, MUSC was pulled in a million different ways, trying to make sure that they met the needs of the community. And that's when we really got our heads together and said, "I've got 125 school nurses that are out willing and able to be able to assist with this."

00;17;15;25 - 00;17;47;11
Ellen Nitz
And through a lot of problem solving, a lot of going, jumping through hurdles and everything else, we together came up with a plan that were able to get out and we gave over 11,000 COVID-19 vaccinations during the pandemic and really got to prioritize our teachers to begin with and had that belief with our teachers that they would go out and tell their kids in the classroom.

00;17;47;13 - 00;18;20;08
Ellen Nitz
"Ms.. Smith is getting vaccinated today. We're so excited." And, you know, the kids would cheer and be excited for them and they waited for their turn. And I really do think that that had a huge impact on so many of our families, knowing that, you know, that when they were able to get vaccinated, they did in the pandemic, and the way that it rolled out really help us to organize and best serve our communities by being able to do it stage by stage.

00;18;20;08 - 00;18;47;02
Ellen Nitz
As soon as the high school kids were eligible, we rolled it out, middle school and then elementary, and MUSC was behind us the whole way. Dr. Eckerd even partnered with us along with Dr. Keys and Dr. Eckhart's input of how to answer some of those questions of, you know, the that the hesitancy that might be out in the community.

00;18;47;05 - 00;19;13;06
Ellen Nitz
They did so many. Dr. Eckard would lead parent driven webinars where parents could ask questions. At the time, I really thought she was crazy. I thought, you don't know what you're going up against. But she was always willing to stick her neck out and answer any questions and try to make sure that she gave as much information as she possibly could.

00;19;13;09 - 00;19;40;16
Ellen Nitz
And as Dr. Key stated before, our information was ever changing, which also caused concern for our families. They thought that we were changing rules as we went along. They didn't realize many times that we were working with our our experts, our local experts that knew all the, you know, the best ways to how to deal with it here in the Lowcountry.

00;19;40;19 - 00;20;07;13
Ellen Nitz
And it was fluid and it was hard and it was stressful. But we were the largest school district supposedly in the nation that was able to stay open five days a week, face to face. And bottom line, that's what we as a community needed to do, not only for our kids but also for our family so that they could get back to work as well.

00;20;07;17 - 00;20;46;11
Ellen Nitz
From this, one of the things that we decided to do as a district even pre-pandemic was address the vaccine noncompliance that we had, you know, within and within the district. DHEC, even though they're our governing body, they don't have the staffing and the manpower to meet the demands and needs. So Dr. Key was behind us 100%, and we were able to start the conversation of needing to bring a vaccine, which is a vaccine for children program into the school district.

00;20;46;13 - 00;21;17;25
Ellen Nitz
And that's a very novel idea. There is another community in New Mexico that also does it, in another district. But we were the second in the nation to bring that about, and luckily we had started that legwork pre-pandemic. So it was a beautiful situation flowing into the pandemic for our team to be able to really use their expertise to help get COVID-19 vaccines done.

00;21;17;27 - 00;21;52;29
Ellen Nitz
And now we are really striving to make sure that all of our children are protected against all of our childhood diseases. And so we eagerly go out each and every day trying to make sure that we address any of the noncompliance science that are out in the school. We have grown to where we have given almost 3000 vaccinations since the beginning of the pandemic just and required vaccinations that are there for our kids.

00;21;53;01 - 00;22;19;06
Ellen Nitz
So, you know this by being able to do it at the school setting, it's a place where parents trust us. They you know, the kids feel more comfortable being in a school setting. That's what they're used to. And then I've got experts that are out there, you know, providing these, making sure that we're following all the rules and regulations that the vaccine program offers.

00;22;19;08 - 00;22;38;02
Ellen Nitz
And very soon, within the month, we're going to be on wheels. So we're going to have a vaccination van for our VFC program that will allow us to get to that many more kids that much faster in their comfort zone.

00;22;38;04 - 00;23;07;15
Janice Key
I want to share that that's being a VSC provider for the school district is something that any hospital could do as a service for their community. The Vaccine for Children Program is a federal program that provides free vaccinations for any kid that's uninsured or underinsured or has Medicaid. And so school districts have rules that you have to have certain vaccinations to stay at school or have an exemption.

00;23;07;18 - 00;23;40;17
Janice Key
And if after a certain date you don't have that vaccination, then you can't go to school. So every year we would have several hundred kids that couldn't come to school because of this barrier. So Ellen had this brilliant idea for the school district to become a VSC provider, which means a doctor has to register and go through a little bit of training and do the paperwork every year to get the vaccinations and have the standing orders for the nurses to give the shots, which is a minimal amount of work on my part.

00;23;40;19 - 00;24;05;17
Janice Key
And then the school nurses take over and keep special storage and records accurately and so forth, so that if any kid needs a tetanus shot booster, for example, and they can get it conveniently from their primary care provider, then we can give it so they don't miss a single day of school. It's incredible, and we hope it spreads to other school districts.

00;24;05;19 - 00;24;17;18
Julia Resnick
And that's really fantastic. And I know so many of our hospitals are struggling with with workforce challenges. So to be able to leverage that school nurse workforce just really fantastic, fantastic work going on.

00;24;17;21 - 00;24;52;12
Quentin Tompkins
I'll just that was that was game changing because again, I was tasked with taking the teams around the state in providing vaccines and providing testing. And then we were you know, when it's vaccine vaccines were becoming available for our pediatric residents. Of course, the schools were the first in line to try to secure vaccines, but there was a limited amount still and there was a limited staff

00;24;52;12 - 00;25;20;11
Quentin Tompkins
and so for Ellen and the Charleston County School District to offer up their nurses, that was a game changer for us because we were just again, pulled in so many different directions and trying to set up sites everywhere that we could for the school districts to step in and utilize their nurses that was an absolute game changer. That became a shining example for other districts around the state as well.

00;25;20;11 - 00;25;35;00
Quentin Tompkins
So kudos to them for stepping up and being willing to utilize their workforce. But that helped this out in so many other areas that I don't even think that they are aware of because they became an example for other districts to look up to.

00;25;35;02 - 00;25;52;18
Julia Resnick
That's fantastic. And Quentin, I want to stick with you. I know that you were tasked with fostering a lot of partnerships and community outreach outside of the school system. Can you talk about some of those partnerships that were developed and how those helped support your vaccine confidence and distribution efforts?

00;25;52;20 - 00;26;21;05
Quentin Tompkins
Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, some of the first relationships we had were still with the schools. Many of our schools throughout the state, closed down for a certain period of time. So when we were doing testing before we actually had vaccines, the school districts were the largest places in most community. They had the largest footprint for us to be able to to house our vaccination sites.

00;26;21;07 - 00;26;49;04
Quentin Tompkins
So we would go to a rural community for, say, Tuesday or Thursday to provide vaccine for the residents there, but we would have people driving in from 4 hours away and sometimes even from other states trying to get in line for testing and vaccines. And so schools were really some of our first partners because they were the only ones in some of those communities that had a footprint to manage the traffic control.

00;26;49;04 - 00;27;25;03
Quentin Tompkins
So schools have been there from the beginning. You know, we are the state's hospital here in South Carolina, the only academic medical center in the state of South Carolina. And early on when we when COVID first came about in our state, the members of the General Assembly pulled us in and you heard them reference the DHEC, which is the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, pulled us in as a two state agencies to kind of lead the charge of getting our citizens tested and then getting our citizens vaccinated.

00;27;25;05 - 00;27;57;04
Quentin Tompkins
We basically operated out of the back of a truck, but we depended upon community champions within those respective communities to say, Here's who you need to talk to in order to secure this facility are here. So you need to talk to this, secure the local library, and we will work with you to get the word out. So there was a lot of working with individuals and community champions within those communities as well as some of their local organizations.

00;27;57;04 - 00;28;38;19
Quentin Tompkins
We had daycares who were willing to open up. You know, they were located in the shopping plaza or plaza that had a large parking lot so we would go and set up outside at the local grocery store if there was a grocery store in some of these communities. I mean, you know, being in rural South Carolina really were limited with some of the resources, and that was the charge behind it all is that you have some folks who are in remote parts of the state and they don't have the resources that a Charleston proper may have or that a Columbia, which is another larger city, our capital city here in South Carolina.

00;28;38;22 - 00;29;04;02
Quentin Tompkins
So we just had to to work with individuals. We worked with churches, we worked with schools, we worked with non-profit organizations, all coming together for that one common cause of making sure that we were able to give people at least an opportunity to get the vaccines or to get tested because we were in in the pandemic. So we just worked closely with individuals in the community.

00;29;04;02 - 00;29;35;05
Quentin Tompkins
And sometimes that was literally me calling someone that I went to college with that I knew was from that little remote, small town and saying, "Hey, are your parents still there or is your aunt and uncle still on county council or whomever? Can you give me a connection that's there?" and oftentimes those communities were reaching out. As time went on, my number was probably one of the most popular numbers that was out there because people were calling left and right from all over to say, Hey, I heard you can help us with testing or vaccines.

00;29;35;05 - 00;30;02;09
Quentin Tompkins
Can you come? And we said yes. We said no to to no one. And behind this we were planning what as things became available, as the age limitations were were loosened. We had priority buckets, we had community that was first and foremost for whoever was eligible in the community. And then schools and then industry became a big emphasis within our state was to keep things open.

00;30;02;09 - 00;30;04;05
Quentin Tompkins
as you heard Ellen say.

00;30;04;07 - 00;30;26;15
Julia Resnick
You know, there's nothing to build trust with them better than having those one on one relationships with people that you could just reach out to and connect in those communities. So I want to wrap up with one final question, and that's really thinking back on these partnerships that you've built before the pandemic and that you've sustained throughout it. So what have you learned about partnering with these community stakeholders that you'll carry into the future?

00;30;26;17 - 00;30;55;09
Quentin Tompkins
I think relationships are key. You know, I gave you my title earlier. I work in government affairs. I work with community affairs. I cannot do my job successfully if I don't build strong, meaningful relationships. And I think that what brought us through the pandemic. I think that is what will sustain us beyond the pandemic. I think that's influenced the way that we do business at the Medical University of South Carolina.

00;30;55;09 - 00;31;26;02
Quentin Tompkins
And to quote our health system, CEO, Dr. Patrick Crawley he came to me and said, "You have shown me a new way of doing business. And we've placed a special emphasis on rural health care as a result of tha" We are in a state where we did not expand Medicaid so regardless of your political views on that or whatever the case may be, we still have residents who are not covered out there and they're suffering.

00;31;26;05 - 00;32;06;05
Quentin Tompkins
And we also have rural hospitals that are closing up left and right. And so the Medical University of South Carolina once was just based in Charleston, but 55% of our patient caseload was from other counties throughout the state. And, you know, most people look at South Carolina as a little small state. It is. But when you have to seek medical care and you have to drive 4 or 5 hours down to Charleston to seek that medical care, and your loved ones are living within that, staying with you at that hospital, away from work, away from home, that that's disruptive to their life and their lifestyle.

00;32;06;07 - 00;32;34;22
Quentin Tompkins
So, you know, we are expanding our footprint. The direct result of what we learned throughout the pandemic is expanding Our footprint in health care is best provided locally. So if we can provide other options and closer options for folks to be able to seek care, that's what we need to do. And we need to make sure that we are not forgetting the number one message, not forgetting the folks who are out in the rural parts of our state.

00;32;34;25 - 00;32;40;01
Julia Resnick
Wonderful. Dr. Key. Any final closing thoughts on partnerships?

00;32;40;04 - 00;33;04;07
Janice Key
One thing leads to the next. I'm very fortunate that I have this wonderful evolving relationship with the schools because I'm a pediatrician. So when you talk about communities, that's where you go to take care of kids was with school. So I think of myself as the pediatrician for thousands of kids trying to keep them all healthy. But what happened

00;33;04;07 - 00;33;36;02
Janice Key
Is wasn't actually ever a real deliberate plan on my part. It was just going out and meeting community partners who invited me into the school to do clinical work, to set up a school based health care center, and the principal invited me out there, like about 30 years ago. So then one need leads to the next. And then once you become a trusted partner, when there's a new problem, you naturally synergize and work together.

00;33;36;04 - 00;33;47;14
Janice Key
And Ellen and I have this dream. Same strategy is we try to use the talents of everyone we know to benefit the kids in the schools, and they all want to help.

00;33;47;16 - 00;33;56;15
Julia Resnick
Great. And then the final question for you. As you know, what have you learned from partnering with with MUSC and what will you carry into the future from that?

00;33;56;18 - 00;34;26;06
Ellen Nitz
Well, first of all, partnership is a win for everybody. It's it's a win definitely for our students and staff. I do believe it's a win for MUSC as well. And what I've learned from it, I've gained a lot of confidence and really knowing that people are out there you know that are willing to help to make a difference. And like Dr. Key said, our kids are in schools.

00;34;26;09 - 00;34;56;17
Ellen Nitz
That's where they spend the majority of their day. And so from this, we have strengthened some of our already existing programs and grown others, such as Project Adam has been a big one that we are making sure that we have heart safe schools and they are out there certifying and that's in MUSC driven. We have our school based health clinics that serve over 20 of our schools right now

00;34;56;20 - 00;35;31;18
Ellen Nitz
that helps the acute needs of some of these kids that are could be in rural areas as well that might not get the care that they need unless MUSC was there with their telehealth program. Again, I never turned down an opportunity to like try to use our partnership as I'm talking I think about our Vision to Learn program that MUSC also came and backed 100% for us getting glasses for any of our students that may need them at no charge.

00;35;31;20 - 00;36;10;19
Ellen Nitz
So I really think the possibilities are endless. I think that as health care providers and institutions, we do this because we care and we want to make people's lives better. We want them to have the quality of life for everyone, whether you live in a urban area or a more rural area. I think by the more heads that you can put together trying to solve any type of issue that you may have, I think that's where we you know, where we really have our strengths and where we can progress to the next stage.

00;36;10;21 - 00;36;31;28
Julia Resnick
All great. And my takeaways from all of this are one, to do the outreach and make those connections and then to form that and just see what grows because you can do so much more together than you could do separately. So I want to thank the three of you for joining me today. Quentin Tompkins, Ellen Nitz and Dr. Janice Key. Thank you so much for your time and your insights and your expertise and for all the good work you do in your community.

00;36;31;28 - 00;36;33;22
Julia Resnick
Really appreciate it.

00;36;33;24 - 00;36;48;17
Tom Haederle
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