Mercy, schools partner to serve area

Mercy Health Lorain Chief Operating Officer Char Wray is lauding the hospital system’s longstanding relationship with Lorain City Schools on its novel coronavirus testing strategy.

“We’ve had a long standing and very meaningful relationship with Lorain City Schools,” Wray said. “We’ve actually have a practitioner that is embedded in their school system, helping to work closely with the 13 buildings and the students, historically, that have been in those buildings as it relates to school based clinics.”

W ray said Mercy Health looks f or ways to help the school distr ic t and to keep the community healthy and safe.

After Mercy Health went through the experience of shutting down elective surgeries and having to develop a re-opening plan, the collaboration made sense in following the leadership of Lorain City Schools CEO/ Superintendent Jeff Graham, she said.

Graham announced Oct. 6 in a district newsletter the partnership with Mercy Health and Case Western Reserve University, acknowledging the unique needs of Lorain.

“COVID-19 testing in Lorain is critical to help our schools, not only to assure we react very quickly to any positive case and to assess our mitigation strategies, but also to get a picture of school/community spread to inform us on future decisions,” Graham wrote.

Coronavirus and poverty

With Lorain’s demographics looking quite different than neighboring school districts, Graham said that an expanded localized testing initiative would present a better picture of the COVID-19 risks.

“For instance, people who live in poverty and racial and ethnic minorities are much more likely to contract, spread, be hospitalized and die from the virus,” he said. “Our reality is different, and therefore, our approach must be different as well.”

Wray said Mercy Health began conversing with the district in the summer, the relationship developed from there as COVID-19 continued to spread.

“The city of Lorain is a very diverse community,” she said. “The school system has a student base, a lot of multi-generational living arrangements, where you’ve got parents, and potentially grandparents, cohabitating with their students.”

Wray noted Graham’s approach in surveying the community about what Lorain families were comfortable with in regards to reopening.

She said the partnership is quite powerful and Mercy Health and Lorain Schools can lean on each other’s expertise.

“(Graham) was very purposeful in his intent on getting a blood pressure check of how people were feeling before they came back and before they started playing sports,” Wray said. “He’s very passionate, like I said, about making sure that he has testing available, because not everybody in the community would have easy access to testing.”

Lorain High School tested students Oct. 15-16 and identified two positive cases.

Last week, student athletes were tested at George Daniel Field in preparation for trying out for winter sports and other close contact activities.

Currently, Lorain students and faculty are in Phase 1, using remote learning with online resources and teachers communicating via computer.

Phase 2 would be a hybrid model with parents having options to continue remote learning or sending children back to their classrooms.

The district would notify families 30 days in advance of a potential return to inperson learning.

Wray