Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Summer 2020 - 44

Berks PPE Resource Network: Mobilizing our Community
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only are they engaging their Berks County plant, but have also worked
with their Michigan plant to make this happen! The ingenuity and
partnership is inspiring! RACC's Schmidt Training + Technology Center
is also working to produce transparency sheets to source our supply
chain with materials.
Week Five, April 20 - We have become a model for other
communities to follow. The Network has been receiving inquiries from
other communities on how to get this up and running in their regions,
so we've come together to produce a "tutorial" video series with The
People Chronicles and Focused LLC. We are over the moon to be able to
help others in their hometowns to get this done! Videos are live on the
website!
Week Six, April 27 - This week, we reached 31,000 PPE units
produced. This includes face shields, as well as the addition of mask
straps or as some have coined them "ear savers," and a DIY mask frame
which requires a cloth component. Over 200 organizations have been
served, and we've got nearly 100 volunteers involved. We also partnered
up with Making Masks in Berks County, the massive sewing network
lead by Angela Pilat, Glamtastik, to provide cloth masks at a limited
quantity during pick-up's.
Also important to note this week, we've now got employers in Berks
County that have re-tooled to ramp up production of PPE! Companies
like Brentwood Industries and L+H signs are producing face shields, and
Bollman Hat Company, Brute Athletic Apparel, and Isolator Fitness are
churning out masks. There are countless other employers using good
old American ingenuity to solve challenges and meet demand. We are
encouraging all organizations that can afford to pay for PPE to turn their
business over to these companies, and a vendor list has been provided to
all organizations.
Berks PPE Resource Network was created to fill a void, but never
to take business from that of our local companies. We will continue to
serve non-profits and those first-responders that need our help, but we
are working with our business community to be sure to work efficiently
together!
The Future: The Berks PPE Resource Network is very well one of
the most amazing collaborations I have ever been involved with. We will
continue to exist until the COVID-19 crisis recedes, but it is without a
doubt in our mind that this group will reinvent new ways to collaborate,
create, and rise to the occasion for the good of our county. This publicprivate blend of makers, families, businesses, educators, and community
stakeholders is the perfect example of what we are capable of.
If you are reading this and are part of the medical
community, there is a strong chance that you or your
colleagues have benefited from PPE produced from this
extraordinary group. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict
when our members will be able to benefit in the collegiality
events the BCMS has hosted in the past ...BUT OUR VALUE HAS
NEVER BEEN STRONGER. Societies like ours were built for times
like these! In the coming months we will continue to adapt and,
with the help of partners like the PPE Resource Network and
GRCA, address the challenges facing Berks County.

www.berkscms.org

Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Summer 2020

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