Healthy Behaviors and Infection Prevention
The Tennessee Department of Health and the CDC funds project to improve health services centers.
The Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) Program is a program within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ELC Program provides epidemiology, laboratory, and health information systems capacity building support to 64 state, large local, and U.S. territory and affiliate health departments through a cooperative agreement. The University of Memphis applied for an ELC grant through the TN Department of Health and has been awarded $500,000 to promote healthy behaviors related to infection prevention by improving the health services centers.
Similar to many educational institutions across the country, the University of Memphis experienced unprecedented changes during the past three years due to the pandemic and the requisite innovations to deliver all university services and curriculum virtually. Many students experienced financial hardship, learning loss, and increased levels of anxiety. Medical service providers had to adjust and adapt to provide COVID-19 screening via phone prior to every patient visit. Psychological service providers experienced significant increase in demands and level of acuity of students seeking psychological services due to COVID-19. Students utilizing psychological services at Student Health and Counseling Services reported COVID-19 impacted their mental health (68.2%), motivation or focus (67.7%), loneliness/ isolation (64%), academics (63.5%), missed experiences or opportunities (56.7%), relationships (45.5%), finances (43.6%), career/employment (43.6%), grief/ loss of someone (31.3%), health concerns (35%), and food/ housing security (13%).
As we are looking at a possible new era of infectious disease, defined by outbreaks of emerging, re-emerging and endemic pathogens that spread quickly, the burden is substantial on colleges, universities, and university health services. The University of Memphis Health Center is no exception, regardless of the many innovations and creative measures within the last few years to detect and mitigate COVID-19 on campus. The ELC grant will help the UofM Health Center to continue our infectious diseases prevention, detection, and mitigation by providing funding for hiring additional nursing staff to help support lab testing, funding for medical grade personal protective equipment (PPE) for the medical staff, and funding for lab tests to detect respiratory issues such as COVID-19 and Influenza A & B. Importantly, the ELC grant will fund much needed improvement of the Health Center facility to help improve patient experience and infection disease prevention. The health center will soon embark in a major process to upgrade ventilation system in the clinic to mitigate transmission of airborne disease and establish a new standard for indoor air quality. In the era of the fast-evolving landscape of university health services, the ELC grant is a tremendously helpful resource for the center to take another step forward in our effort to provide excellent health services for the UofM campus community.
For more information on this project, contact Dr. Linh Luu, project PI, licensed psychologist and director of Student Health and Counseling Services at lluu1@memphis.edu.