Return-to-workplace efforts required unprecedented teamwork
In early May, UF was already looking ahead to lay the groundwork for fall semester when it undertook its return-to-workplace efforts. Gathering the resources needed to send 26,000 faculty and staff through screening and recommended testing in just under two months, providing them with PPE and preparing our facilities for more employees to be back on campus seemed daunting at the time, to say the least.
And yet, through the efforts and hard work of many UF and UF Health employees, it happened. To date, 28,191 employees have been referred for screening. Of these, 23,562, or 91%, have been cleared to have access to the UF workplace. Nearly 20,000 UF faculty and staff have completed testing through UF Health Screen, Test & Protect.
The effort has required extensive collaboration and teamwork on the part of a number of units, beginning with the establishment of an on-site testing center at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Meghan Nodurft-Froman, M.P.H., of the Emerging Pathogens Institute, and Matt Walser, P.A., of the Student Health Care Center, were among the first to realize the extent of what was required when they were called upon to join forces to operationalize a plan.
“It was just a fantastic team that came together,” said Nodurft-Froman. “We were told on a Monday or Tuesday this would happen, and we made it come together by the following Wednesday.”