Northern Tulsa County Coalition has been in existence for quite some time. However, the coalition has struggled since founding members moved onto other positions and the pandemic upended what structure we had. Northern Tulsa County Coalition had frequently discussed the need to become more involved in the community but the question of “what to offer” went unanswered. Don’t get me wrong. The coalition is a treasure of valuable resources and networking professionals with hearts of gold ready and willing to do their part for the community……the problem was how to connect?
Having had participated in Catch-up testing events with other coalitions I knew the antibody testing would draw a crowd and offer value to the community. We discussed the idea at our meetings and decided to move forward updating our resource guide, getting permission to do antibody testing from the event organizer and signed up to see if the catch-up serology team was available. Well……the getting the city to agree to covid testing even antibody testing was not as easy as we had originally hoped. It took a little time to pose the right questions with the right explanations to the right people. We did get approval and submitted the request to the Catch-UP Serology team to find they were already committed to another event the same day.
The decision was made to procced with PCR testing at the Hog’s & Hot Rods festival Saturday June 12, 2021. As we still wanted to offer value to the community we invited Oklahoma Harm Reduction, who said they would provide Naloxone training and hand out free naloxone kits after each individual training. Our resource guide was updated to fully display the value of the coalition and agency partners came together with area resources to share with participants.
June 12th was an extremely hot day, but we made efforts to engage community members by handing out popsicles, offering games for the kids, and discussing valuable information contained in the resource guide. It didn’t take long to realized very few people were willing to even come close to our tent until we removed the “Covid Testing” sign. Our wonderful nurse (Beverly Jennings – from the Tulsa Health Department) volunteered to take our sign and walk around the more populated areas of the event. She spoke with community members about the benefits of being tested and got the event organizers to announce we were offering free covid testing and Naloxone training encouraging anyone interested to stop by.
By days end we passed out over 100 resource guides, a handful were trained in the use of naloxone and one brave sole (a worker at Grand Lake Mental Health Center) participated in the PCR testing. Not quite the community engagement we had hoped for, but we had made a difference. As our small group of volunteers discussed, there was a lot of interest in antibody testing. It seems community members were much more likely to have their finger pricked to learn if they have already had the virus than willing to test and see if they currently have Covid.
We had great intentions of doing another event, but life kept moving and things remained busy. I made a few phone calls (including Collinsville HS and Aruba Community Clinic) looking for additional testing opportunities but so many places were terrified of “inviting” covid to their events. Inspiration finally struck while talking to a member of another coalition. Why not the library. Contact was made with Ronda Weldon at the Collinsville Library (a division of the Tulsa Library Services). This was late in October and Ms. Weldon informed up the library was set to reopen its doors for visitor within the next week. We set the date and contacted the Serology Testing Team. It was a great event (limited to two testing professionals) we still tested 88 people from Oologah, Collinsville, Owasso, and Sperry that day. Community members were so excited to have the opportunity to participate in the testing event.
Exciting for the coalition we were also able to form new partnerships as we discussed our coalition with community members passing through. We offered bags of resource information and each family received one of our community resource books. It was a great day full of good communication, discussion, and education from the OU team regarding question about testing vaccine and what they know and don’t know about Covid. This event went over so well our organization continues to receive request for more antibody testing as well as rapid testing as supplies have become scarce.
The PHIO partnership his meant a lot to the Northern Tulsa County Coalition as funds received have been used to print more resource guides for distribution within the community. Plans have also been made to pay of inspirational murals to be painted in the high school. Hope is increased awareness of community resources and increasing positive thoughts and feelings within the community will assist in developing an overall healthier town.
The Northern Tulsa County Community Coalition continues to meet once per quarter with our next meeting being held Wednesday January 26th at 1200. We invite anyone interested to find more information on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Northern-Tulsa-County-Coalition-227300464344926 or contact Shanan Cox at scox@parksideinc.org.