Cherokee County Health Services Council – When I first read the email, I was very interested in finding out more information. After the Zoom meeting I was afraid that we might not be able to organize and be accepted by the other direct service providers. I talked to the staff, and they wanted to do it and said they would support the effort, so we decided to do it. We held a brainstorming meeting where the staff were so enthusiastic because they kept saying there was a need for testing. Laura White gave me some ideas regarding venues and how to step up the testing. We reached out to our partners in the community coalition. There were several venues that we used. We had testing on the third Saturday of every month for 6 months. We also worked with the Tahlequah Sports league. Groups started calling our organization to set up testing at their events. It really developed our staff into a team that was confident in handling the public. They really depended on each other and each one knew what needed to be done and they carried it out automatically in the end. It helped bring out leadership in the staff. It felt good to accomplish this endeavor in our community.
Our involvement with PHIO Catchup has given us the opportunity to explore different methods of delivery and accept that something didn’t work, and it was ok. Accept it and try something new. We learned from our mistakes and made changes. This was a great program that gave us an opportunity to work in the community and to learn about delivery of health services. We were able to work with our local hospital in taking the tests to their lab for pick up to take to the regional lab for testing.