Cornell Health has continued to innovate and adapt during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been deeply engaged since the beginning. A few examples of our efforts throughout the pandemic include:
- quickly shifting to pandemic operations in order to allow for core COVID-related testing and clinical care within our facility,
- implementing telehealth services to provide the majority of our clinical and administrative services while staff worked remotely,
- establishing a robust quarantine and isolation program to assist students who needed to be out of circulation,
- providing short-term accommodations in support of large number of students in COVID-related quarantine/isolation
- initiating “curb-side delivery” of pharmacy supplies for patients/clients,
- creating online campus COVID education materials for all Cornell students,
- assessing work-place-related safety concerns for employees,
- collaborating with student ambassadors to create peer-based COVID outreach,
- developing new inhouse strategies as well as vendor contracts to provide clinical care and support for students located outside of NY State, including those in other countries,
- collecting data to better-understand the impact of the pandemic and other related stressors on student mental health,
- informing the development of a campus-wide "Live Smarter" public health campaign,
- acquiring new rapid COVID testing technology,
- working to understand and address the co-occurring public health threats of health disparities and systemic racism,
- supporting the establishment of Cornell as a Point of Dispensing (POD) for COVID vaccine.
