It has been a typical sight for Mitchell, whose duties have been reshaped by the current pandemic. Less typical? Seeing her family and friends.

She is staying away from them, which is “the biggest challenge,” said Mitchell, a 2015 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate who works at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in New York City. “I am exposed to the virus every day at work, so I do not want to risk getting any loved ones sick.”

Mitchell is one of many Fordham alumni working daily on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic that has uprooted and altered people’s lives across the country.

She has seen her roles shift and change as her emergency room, like so many others, has worked to treat patients who have COVID-19. Rarely is she treating anyone without some symptoms of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. She’s also had to take on more shifts in a newly created unit—formed out of what was the ambulatory surgery floor—for patients awaiting discharge and for patients receiving end-of-life care.

“Pure COVID Duty”

Things have changed radically for Hussein Safa, FCRH ’12, a third-year resident in family and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, as he and his colleagues treat patients who have what he described as a “scary virus.”

“We had a 28-year-old on our floor with the virus struggling to breathe, and I heard stories of other healthy young people dying from this,” he said. “Those types of cases are also hard on us resident doctors, because these patients are our age with no medical problems like us. It’s hard to be taking care of patients like that and to be thinking, ‘This could be me.’”

His rotations have been canceled, and Safa and his fellow residents are now on “pure COVID duty” for their 12-hour shifts.

“We’re a lot busier during these 12 hours than before,” especially during night shifts, in light of the spike in patients and their acute needs, he said. “You have to really keep an eye on people and their oxygen status, so you’re checking on people a lot.”

Sam Schoer, FCLC ’09, an OB-GYN resident at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, said in late March that they’ve had to pay particularly close attention to the oxygen status of their pregnant patients.

One of them, COVID-positive and 30 weeks pregnant, was given a C-section under general anesthesia because the baby wasn’t looking good, and “because she was intubated and so sick,” Schoer said. “Normally, we would not C-section someone that early.”

The patient was extubated after 10 days and is recovering, and her baby has been healthy since birth. Her case and others like it have made the hospital update its policies to give a COVID test to every patient admitted to labor and delivery, “just in case,” Schoer said.

Victoria Cipollone, FCRH ’14, a physician assistant in cardiothoracic surgery at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, since December, was in the operating room almost every day, learning different adult and pediatric surgeries, until the pandemic began.

Since then, “surgery is pretty much on hold across the board,” except for emergencies, she said. “You’ll find that across the country in most specialties.”

Cipollone said that they have been “reshuffled to help in other ways,” depending on where they’re needed—either in their own departments, the emergency room, or helping COVID patients. And their supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) are increasingly limited.

Disposable face masks designed to be thrown away after leaving a patient’s bedside are being reused over and over, said Safa, the resident from Montefiore. Other basic supplies are also running low, including oxygen masks and medicine that keeps intubated people asleep so they don’t pull the tubes out, he said.

Harrison Pidgeon, FCRH ’15, an emergency medicine resident at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said in early April that while his area hadn’t been hit as hard as others, like New York and Louisiana, they were rationing supplies to stay ahead.

“Everyone was allocated certain PPE, which hadn’t been as structured before,” he said. “I’m lucky my [bosses]have my best interest in mind and go out of their way to ensure my safety.”

Moving Online

While providing equipment is one way to protect those on the front lines, others have done so by trying to limit the number of patients and staff inside the facilities.

Twin sisters April and Kimberly Barnum, FCRH ’11, doctors on opposite sides of the country, have mostly shifted to telemedicine.

Kim is an attending physician in family medicine for Summit Medical Group who usually practices in Westfield, New Jersey; April, board certified in family medicine, is completing her sports medicine fellowship at San Diego Sports Medicine & Family Health Center, although her training room sessions for sporting events have been canceled.

In caring for both patients and herself, Kim Barnum has relied on Fordham’s lessons in cura personalis, or care for the entire person. “That means that it is important not only to take care of yourself physically but also mentally,” she said.

Both Barnum sisters said that the move to virtual care has worked well for the most part. However, Kim said, “One of the biggest challenges I’m seeing with the COVID-19 pandemic is a rise in mental health issues, like anxiety and depression.”

Schoer, the OB-GYN resident, said that the UCSF hospital is relying on “skeleton teams” to minimize the number of people in the hospital. Schoer was on “home call” for two weeks, talking to patients on the phone all day—“a very different change from what my normal life is, where we’re in the hospital up to 80 hours a week.”

The lack of face-to-face interaction has also affected how Bessy Santiago, GSS ’13, does her job. Santiago, a social worker completing the Montefiore Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program in the Bronx, helps her patients cope with the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of serious illness while also guiding them and their families as they make decisions about treatment or end-of-life care.

So far, she has worked with families of more than 200 COVID-19 patients. “We already as a palliative team are exposed to a lot of grief and loss on a day-to-day basis, but now it’s intensified,” she said.

Santiago is negotiating entirely new terrain because she hasn’t been able to speak with the patients, since they’re intubated and sedated, and conversations with family take place remotely, via telephone or video chat. She can’t call families from the patients’ bedsides either.

“I believe that human contact is a huge component to the social work profession. As a social worker, we’re able to identify a lot through just the body language and just the way that things are being said, through their tone of voice, their eye contact,” Santiago said.“These are all factors that sometimes are lost.”

Not the Great Equalizer

In news coverage, the virus was often called “the great equalizer,” but those on the ground said the exact opposite is true: it has exacerbated health care inequities.

“There is a reason that more black people are dying from this virus than white people,” said Brittney Cavaliere, FCRH ’10, program officer at Connecticut Health Foundation, devoted to reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in the state. “It’s important to recognize that this pandemic will only deepen the inequalities that already exist in our country, from a racial and an economic perspective.”

“People of color are already more likely to have diabetes, asthma, heart disease—these are all the risk factors for developing COVID,” Cavaliere said, describing some of the reasons for the higher death tolls among minority patients.

Many people of color also can’t work from home, because they serve as essential workers such as social service providers, home health care workers, custodians, and grocery store workers, Cavaliere said.

“When people talk about people missing PPE [personal protective equipment], they’re not talking about these other essential workers, who are also out there and do not have what they need,” she said.

Not Just Doctors and Nurses

Essential workers also include hospital employees who aren’t doctors and nurses, Cipollone said.

“Everybody’s thanking doctors and nurses, but they forget about the other care providers,” she said. “People forget about [physician assistants]. People forget about nurse practitioners. People forget about respiratory therapists, and social workers and case managers and all those kinds of people who do a lot of the medical care and the behind-the-scenes work.”

Mitchell, the registered nurse in New York City, praised the “unsung heroes” also working on the front lines. “We could not do our jobs without our hardworking security guards, environmental service workers, radiology technicians, and so many others that are risking their health daily to care for patients,” she said.

Sandra Bisono, who is finishing up her master’s program with the Graduate School of Social Service, is another one of those essential workers—working as a part-time social worker with Lutheran Social Services of New York in New York City’s foster care system. Over the past few weeks, Bisono has had to come face-to-face with the challenges the coronavirus is posing for many of the families she works with.

She recently took an 11-year-old girl to the Flushing Hospital Medical Center emergency room in Queens because the girl’s foster mother didn’t want to leave her other children at home and take her. The girl ended up being treated for an infection not related to the coronavirus, Bisono said. She kept up her “strong face” for the child, but the hospital experience—lasting more than five hours—was overwhelming, she said.

“Listening and seeing how severe this virus is, and them not knowing how it’s happening, how to take care of it, how to avoid it … when I left that hospital I was emotionally exhausted. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry, I didn’t know if I wanted to scream. I wanted to do all of the above,” Bisono said.

Glimmers of Hope

Despite the increased workloads, challenging environments, and an unprecedented situation, many frontline responders said there are bright spots.

“One is that social distancing is working, and I think San Francisco is proving that right now,” Schoer, the OB-GYN resident at UCSF, said. “In some places, the numbers are flattening. We’re seeing an impact.”

And while the virus is scary, the overwhelming majority of people who catch it either “might not even know [they have it]or have very, very few symptoms,” Schoer said.

Mitchell said that she and her colleagues have been touched by the community’s daily displays of encouragement.

“The love and support from all of New York City is incredibly uplifting,” she said. “I normally work nights but was lucky enough to be at work during the day for one of the 7 p.m. cheers this week and it was like nothing I’ve experienced before—the love of the people cheering, FDNY workers standing on their trucks, people yelling out their windows and roofs was overwhelming and one of the most heartwarming things I’ve ever witnessed.”

—Reporting by Chris Gosier, Adam Kaufman, Kelly Kultys, and Alexandra Loizzo-Desai

You have been treating HIV and AIDS patients for more than 25 years. What was it like in the early days?
In my second job as a PA, I was working at Beth Israel in the chemical dependency unit. Our role was to detox patients but also address their medical problems. So, early ’80s, what are we seeing? Fevers. We’re asking, why are these lymph nodes enlarged? Why is this person short of breath? Little did we know, this was the only the beginning of the HIV epidemic.

And how has treatment changed?
In the old days, we would say that a CD4 count (T-cell count) below 200 was full-blown AIDS. But that doesn’t really mean anything anymore. With advances in treatment, patients can have the same lifespan as someone who is HIV negative. Now we are more concerned with what diseases they develop as they age, like bone disease, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, and cancers. They may happen sooner for people with HIV.

What impediments to treatment do you see for communities of color?
There are layers of challenging obstacles, including poor access to care, misinformation, stigma, and mistrust of the system. For HIV in particular, stigma is big. Also, sometimes people in communities of color don’t feel like they have a doctor, or they wait until they are symptomatic, when it’s often too late.

How do you help your patients advocate for themselves?
As I diagnose and treat them, I also educate them. So they know what medications they’re on. They know their CD4 and their viral load. When they see a specialist, they know how to be very assertive, and if they need to, they can call me. I can’t take anyone dismissing a patient.

You have said your mother inspired you to go into medicine. How?
My mother is my biggest inspiration. She had diabetes and hypertension and was often weak but remained strong and resilient for her children. She was always supporting and encouraging, no matter how badly she felt physically. I witnessed firsthand the impact of health disparities in my community during her illnesses and as I found my passion in medicine, I was by her side. She didn’t always take her medications, because of side effects and because she was busy raising seven children. And she didn’t always keep doctor’s appointments because she didn’t feel great. When she started going more regularly, the damage was done, in terms of her diet. She eventually succumbed to complications of stroke.

So is nutrition part of the community education you provide?
Yes, I’m a member of Harlem Docs, which provides nutrition workshops in conjunction with Harlem’s new Whole Foods. And I do a lot in terms of wellness and overall health, usually around HIV and AIDS. I also founded the Taylor/Moses Institute, a mentoring program for students interested in the health professions.

Tell me about your involvement with MOSAIC, Fordham’s new affinity group.
There used to be a black and Latino alumni association, but it died out. So a group of younger and older alumni got together to establish this new organization embracing the blended mosaic of all cultures and our shared Jesuit values. Right now I’m an unofficial co-chair. We’ve had some networking activities and we’re hoping to have more cultural events open to all alumni. At Homecoming, younger alumni were excited that there was a place they can give back and support Fordham’s mission.

A medical doctor considers how socioeconomic factors affect our health

Dr. Hussein Safa’s ambitions were shaped by a war. It broke out in 2006 in Lebanon, where he grew up, and he was impressed by the doctors who showed up in his country and risked their lives to provide much-needed medical help.

He later learned the name of their organization: Doctors Without Borders. “When I learned about that, I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do. That’s how I want to give back at some point.’”

Today he’s closing in on that ambition, having just finished medical school at Creighton University and preparing to begin his residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

The idea of giving back was reinforced by his education at Fordham. Grants and scholarships made it possible for him to attend, and the University’s Urban Plunge program fueled his own extraordinary community service efforts, which were recognized by Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice.

At Creighton, he founded an organization to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ patients and providers. And he sought out his residency program because, in addition to its medical training, it teaches community involvement and advocacy so that doctors can better meet the health care needs of urban, diverse populations.

It was Urban Plunge that opened Safa’s eyes to the particular problems facing some urban residents, like a lack of affordable nutritious food.

“Human health doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Safa says, expressing a holistic view reinforced at Fordham and at Creighton, both Jesuit universities that nurture the whole person. “The whole person includes their social environment.”

He feels privileged to have the opportunity to be a doctor and wants to use it for others’ benefit. After completing his three-year residency, which will also include an HIV and global health track, Safa plans to join Doctors Without Borders so he can help people in distressed areas, regardless of whether they can pay for health care. He himself didn’t have health insurance until he came to the United States with his parents and settled in Staten Island just before his 17th birthday.

“I know what it’s like to be constantly afraid that you’re going to get sick and you don’t have money for it,” he says. “That’s part of the reason that I want to give back.”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles. 

FORDHAM magazine checked in with some alumni of the University’s Graduate School of Education—professionals who work with students ranging in age from preschool to high school—to ask them for some guidance. Here’s what they had to say.

Be involved. In order to help your child thrive in the classroom, it’s important to be involved from the get-go. Angela Kang, Ph.D., GSE ’09, runs the mental health clinic at P.S. 8 in the Bronx—part of Montefiore’s School Health Program. Clinic staff evaluate students and see them for behavioral issues, mood disorders, and other concerns.

“We do a lot of family work. The parents have to be involved,” she says. “The more information a parent can give me, even anecdotally, that’s really helpful in terms of formulating what’s going on.” Kang likes to see prior report cards and any other evaluations a child may have received.

Talking to your child, Kang says, is crucial. “Sometimes parents assume that a child will tell them when something is wrong,” but this is not always the case. “And things that go undetected for a while show up as other problematic behaviors.”

Develop trust in your school. A critical component of parental involvement, says Shirly Ulfan, GSE ’14, is getting to know and appreciate the learning environment at your child’s school. Ulfan is the founder of Aleph Bet Academy, a small preschool in Briarwood, Queens, that opened last year.

“It’s always astonishing to me how different parents are in their concerns,” she says. “Some parents want to be sure their child is really clean all the time. Some are obsessed with what their child eats.” Parents, especially those with little ones, need to know that everything will not be “the way it is at your house.”

“I always tell parents that everything that happens in our school happens with forethought.” While she welcomes parents’ involvement, she says it’s crucial that they “begin with the basic idea that I trust the teacher and the school, and that whatever comes up will be handled correctly.”

This applies to discipline as well. “Every parent should ask ahead of time how a school deals with conflict and discipline,” says Ulfan, and be sure that they are comfortable with the school’s approach.

Be collaborative. Parents and teachers share the same goal—you both want what’s best for your child. Approaching discussions in a collaborative fashion will likely yield the best results for everyone.

Noelle Beale, Ph.D., FCRH ’97, GSE ’12, is regional superintendent for Catholic Schools of Central Westchester, responsible for 25 schools. She’s also served as a principal and a classroom teacher. “It’s important for the parent to go into the conversation as a partner, and to really work with the teacher on strengths and weaknesses.”

Collaboration should also involve the student, says Beale, who is an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Education. When schedules permit, she suggests having the student present with the teacher during discussions, to “really walk through what the challenges were.” Or, if the situation is more serious, such as a significant behavioral issue or possible academic failure, parents and teachers can talk alone “to come with strategies ahead of time,” she says, “then sit down with the student and talk about expectations.”

Madison Payton, GSE ’13, teaches English at the Eagle Academy for Young Men II in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he founded a writing center. He says in order for collaboration to happen comfortably, parents should take the time to “understand who we are as educators.”

As a writing teacher, he puts less of an emphasis on grades than some teachers do. This can be confusing to parents of his students, many of whom are Caribbean and come from a more rigid education system. They’ll say, “How did this essay change three times?” But for him, the revision process is more important. He says he tells students, “This is your place to make lots of mistakes. You can do that here because I love you.” So it’s key, he says, that parents ask teachers about their teaching philosophy in the beginning of the year.

Be realistic. What parent doesn’t think their child is brilliant? But Beale cautions that your child may not have all the strengths you want them to have. “As a parent myself, I really try to go in realistically and say, ‘My child may have challenges. How can I best support them at home, and what can I do to best support the teacher?’”

By the same token, she says, teachers are not perfect either. “Education is changing. Look at the Common Core. Teachers themselves are evolving with their knowledge, because there are new things that they’re teaching.”

In his school in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, Payton sees parents—often single moms—comparing their kids to themselves at that age. They might say, “Well, I had less, and I was able to do it.” But times have changed, he says, and every child develops differently. “Remove yourself from the equation and try to figure out why the child is making certain decisions.”

Trust your instincts. As much as it’s critical to develop trust in your child’s school and teachers, Ulfan says, it’s also important to remember that you know your child better than anyone else in the world.

“Parents have very strong instincts,” she says. “Often professionals will fail a child in a way where a parent would not.” Ulfan works with parents who are learning their children have special needs, and says it will be critical that they fight to receive all the evaluations and services their child requires. “If you have concerns and they’re not going away—in whatever setting—you really have to fight. Stomp your foot on the floor and pound your fist on the table and be the loudest, squeakiest wheel you can be.”

Four members of the consortium—Fordham, The New York Botanical Garden, The Bronx Zoo, and Montefiore Health System—have teamed up for a series of programs and events dedicated to educating others about the concept of a “healthy planet, healthy people.”

The first event will be an April 12 lecture at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, “Celebrating the Legacy of Jane Jacobs: A Conversation with Greg Lindsay.” Jacobs was responsible for leading the successful opposition to the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have run along Canal Street. The University will also host talks by science writer Carl Zimmer and Eric W. Sanderson, landscape ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo. Zimmer speaks on April 21 at the Flom Auditorium in the William D. Walsh Family Library. Sanderson speaks on April 26 in the same venue.

Sanderson’s lecture on April 26 is an example of the collaboration between the zoo, which offers complimentary general admission to all NYC undergraduate college student, and Fordham.

The zoo will host a three-day long Earth Fair on April 22, which will include interactive exhibits such as a Carbon Footprint app that lets visitors figure out their own carbon footprint, a discussion about the amazing conservation success story of the rebound of the wild population of white rhinos, and a staging of Reusable the Musical.

John Calvelli, executive vice president of Public Affairs for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said that the partnership has inspired the zoo to consider new ways to reach out to the Bronx community. One initiative he said they’re exploring is providing free passes during the month to children who get their checkups with their doctors at Montefiore.

“By coordinating efforts and planning activities together, we strengthen the links between these vital neighborhood institutions and new ideas are born through collaboration,” he said.

The weekend of April 22 will see a flurry of activity at Montefiore and at the New York Botanical Garden as well. The hospital will host an Earth Day celebration on April 21, and on April 22, the Garden will host tours, a composting bin-making workshop and a screening of the 2013 documentary Seeds of Time, which follows an agriculturalist who is building a biological archive to maintain crop diversity.

For more information, visit the Bronx Science Consortium event page.

The Sept. 30 event, held at the Bronx Zoo, was a collaboration of the five-member Bronx Consortium, consisting of the zoo, Fordham, the New York Botanical Garden, Montefiore Medical Center, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

For many of the researchers the event served to update fellow participants on the status of ongoing data collection and results.

Rats!

For Matthew Combs, a graduate student at the Calder Center, the event marked the end of data collection on rat migration in Manhattan.

“We pretty much covered the whole island and finished yesterday,” he said.

Combs’ work was part of a large study headed by Jason Munshi South, PhD, associate professor of biological sciences, one that garnered much press attention over the past year.

The team collected rat DNA from all 41 Manhattan zip codes. Among the many findings was that rats, like their human counterparts, tended to stick around their own neighborhood until it got too crowded, after which they moved on to other locations.

“When it gets too crowded, the animals migrate out to find new habitat with fresher food,” said Combs. “In terms of actionable results, if we can map where the rats migrate from, and stop the populations at that source, then maybe we’ll be a bit more successful at preventing a prolonged infestation.”

Is Acupuncture for the Birds?

Many of the research studies, like Combs’, collected hundreds of samples, whereas others presented a single case study.

Jessica Chin, of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) at the Bronx Zoo, presented a case study of a 15-year-old parrot whose claw hock was swollen and beleaguered by arthritis. After trying a variety of meds for three months, including anti-inflammatory drugs, the parrot showed no signs of progress. The researchers turned to acupuncture instead.

“We had to restrain him, but he was usually chill when we poked him,” she said. “He showed significant improvement in about six weeks. He can now use his hock to grab food and he’s much happier. We believe the acupuncture did increase his quality of life.”

Chin said that the use of acupuncture is limited at the zoo because not all animals are agreeable to being poked. She noted that tigers are not as amenable as ostriches. She said that even the ostrich had to be coaxed into the process.

“We’d have to move with her and ‘Walk-walk-walk—poke! Walk-walk-walk—poke!’ And then do it the same way to get the pins out.”

However, the ostrich also showed improvement, she said.

Taming Lionfish Proteins

Fordham College at Rose Hill Juniors Zachary Mattes and Nina Le clocked more than 500 hours at the lab this past summer studying the genome code and proteins of the venomous lionfish. Paul Smith, PhD, supervised their research.

Mattes explained that the fish, native to the Pacific Ocean, has been introduced into the Atlantic Ocean, particularly in the Caribbean where the population has “skyrocketed.”

“Aside from the ecological impact, it’s an obvious danger to humans,” he said.

The two are using chromatography to isolate the two proteins that cause the neurotoxic effects. They plan to continue research of the protein structure of the venom through crystallography.

“This is only the beginning,” said Le.

Peer-to-Peer; Teen-to-Teen

Alongside the graduates and undergraduate researchers, high school students from Project TRUE, the urban ecology field research program, also presented their findings. Project TRUE pairs Fordham biologists with WCS educators that work together to train teens during the summer in areas that promote interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Valerie Pierre-Louis, a student at the Lycée Français in Manhattan, said that Project TRUE taught her how to communicate science to her peers.

“As teenagers we know how to interact with each other and explain science,” said Pierre-Louis. “Some science words we may have to explain a little more, but after that they understand it.”

There’s also a benefit in meeting other researchers, students said.

“They are like my friends now,” said Moomitu Kashem, of Midwood High School in Brooklyn. “I’ve made so many connections from all these different high schools and I have a new bond with others who like science.”