Last spring, when seemingly everything abruptly stopped in response to the pandemic, the Community Health & Wellness Services Department at Chester County Hospital followed suit. On March 10, the department's Director, Michele Francis, MS, RD, CDCES, LDN, cancelled all of its programming for the foreseeable future. But only a week later, it was online again.
A year-long diabetes prevention program had begun meeting only two weeks earlier. "I didn't want to just cancel it. We had a lot of people counting on it. So we thought we'd try to do it virtually," Francis said. The group's next meeting was the department's first experience into virtual programming. Within the next two months, all of the originally scheduled programs were moved to Zoom. And in the months since, Francis and her dedicated team have managed to grow and diversify the department's public programming using the online platform. "We're offering some things in Spanish now, which we never did before the pandemic," she says. "We're also doing more with mental health. In light of the toll this pandemic is taking on so many people, we thought that was important."
Some of the new programming also reflects new community partnerships. A NARCAN tutorial was presented in conjunction with Chester County Drug and Alcohol Services. The department has cohosted other sessions with the West Chester ShopRite (Cooking in Color), West Chester University (Mental Health First Aid USA), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (Talk Saves Lives), and the Alzheimer's Association (10 Warning Signs of Alzheimer's).
Even more, enrollment has grown in nearly every program. "Zoom opened up a whole new world for us," she said.
No longer limited by physical space constraints, Francis has seen registration improve dramatically in some instances. "Before the pandemic, if a room held 30 people, we might register 35 and consider it a big success," she says. "For one virtual nutrition class, we registered more than 140 people. We never had more than 30 people for an in-person nutrition class."
Susan Pizzi, MS, RN, the Community Health Education Coordinator for the hospital, says that the staff's willingness and ability to pivot online so quickly is a main reason for the achievement. And by staff, she means hospital-wide, because the programming draws on contributors from throughout the organization. "Our staff immediately accepted the challenge and recognized its importance in supporting our patients and remaining connected with the larger community," she says.
Seizing the Opportunity
As of March 2020, all Wellness programs are available online. Topics cover a broad spectrum that includes nutrition, lifestyle, mental health, heart health, cancer care, diabetes prevention and management, fall prevention, senior health, support groups of various kinds, and spotlights on new, advanced treatments provided by the hospital.
Before the pandemic, the programming cycled by season, and there was no discussion of embarking on virtual programming. Francis started in her position in July 2019 and expected to take a year observing how the department operated before she began tinkering with anything. But as soon as the prospect of moving the department's programming online cropped up, she very quickly said, "Let's do this". Upper management and the educators were just as eager to get behind the new approach.
Rather than simply building new bridges to the community at a time when they were desperately needed, Francis seized the occasion to better align the programming with what the community wanted. To do that, her department teamed up with the hospital's Marketing Department to create a survey that was emailed to more than 10,000 community members. Francis admits that she's still trying to pinpoint what exactly the community wants. But the overwhelming response to many of the new offerings that were added over the second half of 2020 -- which were influenced, in part, by the feedback provided in the surveys -- tells her she's on the right track.
The future evolution Francis envisions takes more advantage of the technology. Now that most are comfortable using Zoom, she wants to experiment with breakout rooms and webinars. She's also making a concerted effort to attract more young and middle-age adults, whose participation has traditionally been lacking in the department's programs, in-person and online.
Improvising with Paper Towel Rolls
Sudden as the transition online felt at the time for those within Community Health & Wellness Services, it was for the most part remarkably seamless. Some programs needed to be entirely redesigned. Pizzi said that she held numerous practice sessions with staff to ensure that the demonstrations for the Hands-Only CPR class were properly presented and framed, with the mannequins and automatic external defibrillators positioned and repositioned in front of a webcam.
And then there was the matter of how the participants could simulate the act at home. Pizzi discovered that a roll of paper towels rolled up in a bath towel adequately mimicked proper body mechanics during a series of hard and fast compressions.
"Once those wrinkles were ironed out, the class became every bit as interactive as it usually was in person," Pizzi said. Participants were encouraged to have their cameras turned on and their microphones unmuted so that they could ask questions in real time. Class sizes were also intentionally kept small.
"Our shift to virtual programming may have come out of necessity, but I think it will remain an integral part of our community-based programming and outreaches," Pizzi said. "There are many positive aspects, but perhaps the most important one is that it's improved access to our programs. So it's not just the quantity of connections that have increased through our new virtual presence but also the impact of those connections."
"Virtual programming isn't going away, even once the pandemic subsides. So we figured we might as well make the most of it," Francis says.