Osage County Community Health Alliance has a long history of limited community involvement. The OCCHA is primarily comprised of representatives from local sectors of the community including health and mental health services, school personnel and tribal partners. The group meets monthly to discuss community health issues and resources. Over the years, the monthly meetings have very much mirrored a networking style of interaction. Members of the OCCHA were aware that the group existed, but outside of that, it seemed the awareness was extremely low. Pre-pandemic we were poised to change that. We had pledged to expand the group’s reach by collaborating with the community to promote a thriving and healthy community. We had planned to increase community education efforts in a variety of ways.
Unfortunately, when the pandemic hit, all planning and brainstorming and in person activities came to a halt. When the opportunity to get involved with CATCH-UP Oklahoma came around, we were excited at the possibility to help the community during the middle of a pandemic. With testimony from different board members, discussing how the pandemic was affecting the community, schools, work places and kids in addition to how we could see it was it was affecting rural communities differently compared to urban communities – we knew we had to try and assist.
When OCCHA became involved in CATCH-UP Oklahoma, it was an interesting time. The involvement with this project helped us develop our own Community Health Improvement Organization out a bit more as an entity rather than just a networking group. The local Subway agreed to partner with us by providing a location for us set up the testing events. We also partnered with the Osage Nation and they provided tents, tables, chairs and extensions cords that were needed. . We had intended to contact organizations that were hosting local events already and try to partner with them for testing events, but we were unable to partner with any other local events, as most events at the time (March 2021) still weren’t happening due to COVID numbers being so high. Unfortunately the testing events we hosted did not generate the numbers we were hoping for. Despite the low turnout, we were able to get some COVID tests to people who needed them for work. And we helped work out the kinks in the processes for the overall project.
Pandemic Fatigue was already hitting pretty hard by March 2021. It proved to be extremely difficult to get volunteers for the testing events. Most of the volunteers that did come to the testing events were from organizations affiliated with OCCHA. All volunteers had to donate their time as the events were not hosted during normal working hours. But, most of the volunteers have children, spouses, etc. and had been affected the pandemic in some way, and knew the importance of this type of event.
We’re still working on developing our internal capacity to really flesh out what we are capable of. We have a diverse set of expertise in our group, and are excited about the possibilities that we can offer the community. Unfortunately, the pandemic has hit the workforces of the rural areas hard, and our group is spread as thin as ever.