Christine Brower has helped make and donate more than 500 masks.
A few weeks before Governor Cuomo announced that New Yorkers would be required to wear face masks out in public due to the pandemic, Christine Brower, Executive Assistant, Jack and Lucy Clark Department of Pediatrics, and her family, including her Aunt Lena, sister Camille, and young niece Sofia, were already hard at work making face masks for the Sew You Care Project, a Facebook group created to help supply first responders, essential workers, immunocompromised families, and nursing homes all over the nation with requests for cloth face masks.
They spent hours of their personal time in the evenings and on weekends helping to help meet the rising demand for face coverings and preserve authorized personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers who need it. Once the Governor required face coverings in New York, Chris reached out to Lisa Satlin, MD, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics; Jessica Reid-Adam, MD, Pediatric Residency Program Director; and Steven Yung, MD, Medical Director of Quality Improvement and Safety Services, to offer mask donations to her colleagues for personal use outside of the hospital.
“It was never a question of ‘should we do this?’ It was an affirmation that ‘We absolutely need to do this.’ This is the right thing to do and whatever it takes to get the job done,” Chris says. “It’s a skill and talent we are all graced with, so it is our duty to help. Our doctors, nurses, residents, support staff, and so many other colleagues are putting their lives on the line for us, this small gesture is the least we can do to help ease a little anxiety for them while they are traveling to and from work at the hospital.”
The group creates 30 to 50 masks per week, and Chris packages them individually and includes a special note with each one, thanking our “Health Care Heroes and Heroines” for helping to save the lives of the people of “Gotham City.” So far they have made and donated more than 500 masks and are still going strong in an effort to support as many across the nation as possible.
“I think the most important message we want to share is that we want our health care workers to know that they are not alone, we are all in this together,“ Chris says.
The colorful and creative masks are meant for personal use outside the hospital.
Submitted by Carla Monaco, Associate Director, Marketing, Department of Pediatrics