Pitt’s Pandemic Safety Ambassador network was born in 2020 to help keep the community informed about best practices as COVID-19 spread throughout the world and the latest health guidance and restrictions.
BECOME AN AMBASSADOR
Pitt faculty and staff who would like to become a campus Safety Ambassador, should contact Heather Peffer at hmo1@pitt.edu or contact of Environmental Health & Safety staff at 412-624-9505 or safety@pitt.edu. The most recent webinar is available on the Environmental Health & Safety website.
“In the beginning (of the pandemic), there was so much confusion and concern, especially at each individual department,” said Jay Frerotte, who leads the Department of Environmental Health & Safety as assistant vice chancellor for the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management. “People didn’t know who to go to or where to get accurate information. With this network, they now had a point person to go to.”
More than two years later, the program created by EH&S has endured and evolved to address a host of safety topics at the Oakland and regional campuses.
“It’s been a wonderful tool for us,” Frerotte said. “It’s been a conduit for people to get information and ask questions. But there was also this whole data component, where we had a cohort of 250 people representing so many areas of the University providing us with real-time data about what was happening in their respective area. Having that network to collect data was invaluable during the pandemic.”
Frerotte and Heather Peffer, a laboratory safety specialist at EH&S, spearheaded the ambassador network after working on a similar program to provide information about lab safety in the two years prior to the pandemic’s onset.
“We saw that network and its success, and said, ‘Can we build on that? Can we use that model?’ ” Frerotte said.
Monthly webinars, including question and answer sessions, were held with the ambassadors throughout the pandemic. “It worked really well. Sometimes, they’d present a question we hadn’t thought of, and they’d bring up questions that were specific to their units and their buildings,” Peffer said. “They were (the boots on the ground). They were living it, so they provided valuable feedback on the various guidance documents developed by the University.”
The biggest challenge, Frerotte said, was keeping pace with a global pandemic that evolved quickly.
“Things were changing so rapidly. It was week-to-week, day-to-day,” he said. “The ambassadors met monthly, but sometimes, by the next meeting, what we had already discussed may have been obsolete. We were having trouble keeping up, but everyone was determined to do what was needed at the time.”
COVID-19 may be receding as the most pressing issue facing the Pitt community, but the need to discuss safety has not diminished.
As EH&S leaders began to look beyond the pandemic, they conducted a survey of ambassadors in which 91 percent of the respondents said they wanted to continue participation in the network in some capacity. By March 2022, the ambassador network had its first non-COVID related webinar.
“We weren’t just going to fold it up,” Frerotte said. “It had become such a viable tool for safety information that we knew we were going to harness that energy.”
For ambassadors like Jamie Wincovitch, director at the University Child Development Center, who remains a part of the network, there is “value in the regular meetings that reflect on a variety of topics surrounding health and safety at the University of Pittsburgh,” she said.
The monthly session now focuses on a range of issues, which include finding and obtaining EH&S services; what to do if you’re hurt at work; pedestrian safety; and ergonomics in the workplace. In October, the webinar was joined by the Emergency Management team, which introduced the group to UPitt Ready, the system that manages business and academic continuity if a crisis impacts the University’s ability to operate and recover.
“I believe the continuing role and involvement of the (ambassador network) should be to help establish this cohesive Continuity of Operations plan,” said Deanna Jo Ferchak, a school nurse at Falk School. “This plan will become a comprehensive living document and will provide information, resources, and contacts for each department to better plan for a future emergency event and help us be better prepared if faced with a future event such as the pandemic was.”
Peffer said the advocacy shown by the ambassadors has been commendable, a sentiment echoed by Frerotte.
“We owe them a great deal of thanks,” Peffer said. “They were concerned about the well-being of their co-workers. Even in the chats during monthly webinars, they have been so gracious, thanking us about the information we provided, or where they could go to get it. It makes me feel good just to know how we were able to help, but it also makes me feel good that we’re part of this community that is interested in helping each other.”
— From the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management