Brigham Health COVID-19 Response Fund Update

THANK YOU

As members of our Brigham family, you have joined us in facing the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis head-on, and we are deeply grateful for your outpouring of support. Your generosity has fueled our response, and as you will read in the highlights below, it is having a tremendous impact on our patients, our frontline staff, and the communities we serve.

With your help, we stand ready to navigate our new normal, as our research teams lead work at the new Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation to identify new tools for testing and treatment, and ultimately, a vaccine that can truly bring this crisis to an end. Your support of these efforts is vital to our progress, and for that we thank you.

Betsy Nabel, MD
President, Brigham Health

GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND: THIS IS WHO WE ARE

From the start of this crisis, your support has been critical to helping us keep our Brigham team safe while providing extraordinary care to our patients. Thousands of Brigham healthcare providers and staff, many of them redeployed from all corners of our institution, have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with extraordinary collaboration, courage, and compassion. From our dedicated facilities crew to our unwavering nurses, these are the heroes you’ve supported. Please know how grateful we are for your generosity, including your heartfelt messages of encouragement on our gratitude board.

Brigham Health President Betsy Nabel, MD, hands out masks to Brigham staff.

Labina Shrestha, operations manager, Environmental Services, helps prevent the spread of pathogens at the Brigham, keeping the environment clean and safe for patients and employees.

Deb Buonopane, BSN, RN, a Brigham Emergency Department nurse of over 20 years who was treated for COVID-19 at the Brigham, was discharged to cheers and applause outside the hospital entrance.

Nurses and Emergency Room staff from the Brigham got together to raise funds for Off Their Plate, a nonprofit that helps provide meals to healthcare workers on the front lines. Together, they helped provide meals to two of the hardest hit hospitals in New York, Mount Sinai Queens and Elmhurst Hospital. See a special message to Brigham nurses from Chief Nursing Officer Maddy Pearson, DNP, RN, NEA-BC

A Brigham Health nurse administers a COVID-19 test at Brigham’s drive-up testing facility.

Brigham Health staff nurse, Erin Borland, BSN, RN, CCRN, treats a COVID-positive patient.

"We do our job with great pride to keep the patients safe and comfortable. We never stop cleaning and disinfecting the surfaces because we know how important it is to minimize the spread of the virus and to keep everybody safe." –Miguel Romero and Vital Goncalves, unit associates, Environmental Services, Brigham Health

After COVID-19 was first reported in the Navajo Nation in mid-March, the infection rates per capita rapidly surpassed those of any individual state. Thanks to our long-standing partnership with the Indian Health Service (IHS), the Brigham was able to quickly provide critical support to this vulnerable community. We delivered vast quantities of PPE, care kits, and iPads, as well as information sharing and on-call critical care physicians for urgent telephone consults from the IHS.

Inpatient physical therapist Katie McKenna spotted this colorful display of community support posted outside our Emergency Department, paying tribute to the heroic commitment of our incredible staff. No matter your role, your tireless contributions are an inspiration to all in these trying times.

CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS AND OUR COMMUNITY

Thanks to your generosity, the Brigham was fully prepared to treat the first major surge of patients with COVID-19, providing expert, compassionate care while supporting them and their loved ones. Extending this care to our communities, we were able to deliver testing and other important resources to neighborhoods hit hardest by the virus.

Keeping Staff and Patients Safe

Your philanthropic support and gifts of personal protective equipment (PPE) allowed us to quickly adopt a universal masking policy, which has been critical in keeping patients and staff safe.

Providing Responsive Care

Hospital leadership pivoted quickly in response to rapidly changing conditions. Flexibility proved critical, as we repurposed spaces for COVID diagnosis and treatment and redeployed staff to address the most urgent needs.

Connecting Patients and Loved Ones

With a limited visitor policy, we adopted widespread use of tablets at the bedside, which allowed care providers to monitor patients even more closely and enabled patients to communicate with their families.

Activating Community Testing Sites

We deployed pop-up testing sites in heavily impacted neighborhoods including Hyde Park, Roxbury, and Mattapan. Testing was free, and we assured all community members that immigration status would never be in question.

Distributing Care Kits To Our Neighbors

At testing sites, our volunteers handed out care kits with masks, hand sanitizer, gift cards, educational pamphlets, and boxes of food. Compassionate care for our most vulnerable neighbors is more important now than ever.

Expanding Community Outreach

Our staff took to the phones to conduct culturally appropriate outreach to non-English-speaking patients and the elderly about the virus, mobile COVID care, and food security, ensuring they had the necessary information to stay healthy and safe.

The waiting and exam rooms were spotless. The check-in staff carefully and amiably screened for signs of coronavirus. They did so without alarming anyone.

Patient
From colleagues going out of their comfort zone to different jobs without complaint, to N95s, to everyone for handling uncertainty gracefully and channeling individual fears into positive team fuel—coming to work was a blessing for so many reasons. I’m truly honored to have faced this challenge with this hospital and this team.

Kristi Lutjelusche, MHA, R.T. (R) (VI) ARRT, clinical director of Diagnostic Radiology
The telephone visit reduced anxiety for my wife and me in light of the virus pandemic and the fact that I didn't have to take public transportation to ‘meet’ with Dr. Gonzalez.

Patient
We saw the world brace and social distance while we ran into the storm. We were called to duty like many other times before, but these times have been different and most certainly will change our hearts forever.

Daria Mlynarski, BSN, RN, OCN, Kurlat Essence of Nursing Award honoree
I was there for COVID-19 testing. I felt so safe with how the ER has everything mapped out. All staff were excellent. They made me feel safe and know that they would do their best to test me quickly and safely. The tent setup was excellent and efficient.

Patient
I want to recognize our employees who work behind the scenes maintaining equipment, cleaning patient rooms and public spaces, providing security, food services, patient transportation, and more. Without their vital contributions, the work of our medical teams would not be possible. Please extend a personal thanks when you see them.

David Verban, MA, senior diversity and inclusion consultant in Human Resources and a member of the Brigham Experience team

ADVANCING INNOVATIVE SCIENCE

With your support, the Brigham has launched the Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation (MGBCCI), an unprecedented research enterprise to address the immediate and long-term challenges of COVID-19. Co-led by David Walt, PhD, of the Brigham, and Guillermo Tearney, MD, of Mass General Hospital, this is the only center of such size and scope in the country. Our open-door policy for all researchers sets the stage for groundbreaking innovation and collaboration, including joint efforts with research powerhouses like the Broad Institute and pharmaceutical partners. Under this powerful new MGBCCI umbrella, thousands of scientists, engineers, and clinicians from across our hospital are working rapidly to advance major projects in the four key areas below.

Diagnostics

Our diagnostics teams are laser focused on swift development and deployment of highly sensitive tools to detect COVID-19, including an antibody test that is 1,000% more sensitive than other currently available tests. Our tests are now widely considered the gold standard, and the team is working to validate newly developed tests as they become available on the market.

Therapeutics and Vaccine Development

As the world eagerly awaits effective treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine for COVID-19, our researchers are working at an unprecedented pace to develop and test new therapies and vaccine candidates. Among numerous strategies in development, we are leading the first high-quality, randomized controlled trial to evaluate blood plasma transfusions for COVID. This promising technique uses blood plasma from recovered patients to boost immunity in the sickest patients and may provide an effective treatment option.

Devices

At the outset of the crisis, we quickly mobilized to protect frontline healthcare workers by addressing the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). In one extraordinary innovation, we developed a testing booth (pictured) to safeguard staff, dramatically reducing the need for disposable PPE while supply chains caught up to demand. The Brigham was able to share this transformational tool with hospitals in New York City at the peak of their surge, helping them keep their own care teams safe at a critical time.

Data Analytics

The MGBCCI is collecting vast amounts of data with sophisticated analytical tools to address pressing issues posed by this ever-changing pandemic. We are building systems to harness the power of big data in understanding the biology of the coronavirus, creating a central biobank portal to illuminate how the virus affects patients, leveraging AI to predict hotspots, and using demographic information to improve health equity for disproportionately affected communities.