Got Swine Flu? We didn't.

By Jen A. Miller

The public health scare of the decade may have passed, but when H1N1 exploded on the radar screen in spring 2009, no one knew what to expect. University of the Sciences formed a response team to start planning what to do should swine flu come to campus.

“We’re a health science institution, and we needed to utilize best practices to respond to a health need on campus,” said William Cunningham, PhD, dean of students.

The University used what could have been a disaster as a cross-disciplinary teachable moment that gave students hands-on experience in dealing with a real health emergency.

First concern was keeping faculty, staff, and students healthy. The second was spring 2009 graduation. Once the spring panic ebbed and the team realized that H1N1 was going to be a persistent threat, they created a plan should it spread across campus and a plan to vaccinate as many students as possible.

“It’s an enrollment management issue,” said Paul C. Furtaw, PsyD, director of Student Health and Counseling Center (SHAC).

“A lot of sick students would have brought the institution to a halt.”

The response team came up with a multipronged program that involved:

1. Raising awareness of the need to be vaccinated, especially for students under 24 and students who already worked in healthcare.
2. Raising awareness of measures that could prevent the spread of H1N1, such as regular hand washing and self-isolating if experiencing flu-like symptoms.
3. Preparing a system that would vaccinate as many people as possible when doses became available—a day that the response team didn’t know because the City of Philadelphia could not give solid dates when the vaccine would be delivered.

“One of the most important techniques we used was viral marketing,” said Melanie Oates, PhD, former director of the undergraduate business program. “Our target market—young people—responds much more to word-of-mouth marketing and to Internet social marketing.”

Her students created t-shirts with slogans like “Got Swine Flu? I don’t. Get vaccinated.” on them. Marketing students wore them around campus and sold them for $5 each, the cost of which was subsidized by Student Affairs and SHAC. They also blanketed University-affiliated Facebook student and group pages with information about why students needed to be vaccinated.

As soon as vaccines were made available, the response team set up a vaccination clinic in the Athletic/Recreation Center. Student volunteers helped with everything from getting the word out to dose preparation, while trained faculty from Philadelphia College of Pharmacy administered the shots.

“The key was we did a lot of prep work,” said Bernard D. Gollotti, executive director of public safety and security. “We started with the pandemic preparedness team, who put together a plan that was executed.”

Through two clinics, over 1,100 people were given vaccinations. The University vaccinated 30 percent of its students, more than triple the national average, which put the University in a good position had a third wave of H1N1 come around as feared.