“COVID-19 Community Conversations” Round Five

This week “COVID-19 Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tions” con­tin­ues with anoth­er three videos that high­light spe­cif­ic efforts from orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty that pro­vide key ser­vices and pro­vide cru­cial lead­er­ship around the county.

You can find our entire col­lec­tion of videos on our YouTube chan­nel “San Juan Coun­ty COVID-19 Response” at www.sjccovid.com/conversations. We now have fif­teen videos! Here are the new ones this week:

Richard Uri: Richard is the Behav­ioral Health Coor­di­na­tor for the San Juan Coun­ty Depart­ment of Health and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices. He gives spe­cif­ic guid­ance and ideas for cop­ing with quar­an­tine and cri­sis. This video is intend­ed for every­one, and his advice is deeply prac­ti­cal for all of us, not just those deal­ing with a seri­ous men­tal health issue. Even if you feel fine you may be sur­prised how much this sit­u­a­tion is affect­ing you. Richard also offers a use­ful guid­ed tour through how to access infor­ma­tion on the men­tal health resources avail­able to coun­ty residents.

It’s no mis­take that we have fea­tured men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als both this week and last. COVID-19 has pulled out the best and worst from all of us. We want to high­light this video as one of the most ben­e­fi­cial that we have shared. We strong­ly encour­age every­one to watch it, to share it with loved ones, and take seri­ous­ly his advice.

The Team at Rock­Island: It seems like even three years ago our options for remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion would have been severe­ly cur­tailed. Through­out this cri­sis, inter­net use has sky­rock­et­ed, so we thought we would turn to local provider Rock Island for an update on how they are deal­ing with the COVID-19 cri­sis. Along the way they answer ques­tions such as “How has inter­net use changed,” “How have they worked with local schools to help peo­ple with lim­it­ed access,” and more.

Par­tic­i­pants in this video were Alan Smith — Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Ali Boe — Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Sup­port, Nick Grose­close – co-Senior Vice-Pres­i­dent of Tech­nol­o­gy, and Fredrick Vaught — co-Senior Vice-Pres­i­dent of Technology.

Jami Mitchell: Jami Mitchell is a Senior Ser­vices Spe­cial­ist work­ing for San Juan Coun­ty. She is also assigned to the Emer­gency Oper­a­tions Cen­ter as the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions branch direc­tor. Much of her work is involved in help­ing a coali­tion of local non-prof­its and agen­cies to get food and oth­er essen­tial sup­plies to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. They have served more than 250 house­holds, and per­formed more than 1715 home deliv­er­ies. They’re also send­ing out almost 500 meals a week to seniors in our coun­ty, pro­vid­ing a vital life­line for vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions. Mitchell says, “We work togeth­er to make sure nobody falls through the cracks.”

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