Story at a glance
- A group of graduate students set up a nonprofit to donate graduation gowns for PPE use.
- The organization, Gowns4Good, has received about 4,500 gowns thus far.
Despite President Trump’s claim that some parts of the country have not seen the “sporadic” quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE) that has made it difficult for health care providers to treat coronavirus patients, many hospitals and clinics are still having trouble accessing enough supplies.
Nathaniel “Than” Moore, a physician’s assistant at The University of Vermont Medical Center and MBA candidate at the Grossman School of Business, however, saw shortages among his colleagues firsthand while treating COVID-19 patients.
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As both a student and frontline worker, he, along with countless others, had life upended with cancelled events and an influx of coronavirus cases. It was at this juncture that Moore saw an opportunity.
“Working as an emergency medical assistant…[I] noticed there was a solution to get PPE into the hands of our health care workers, and that solution is the graduation gown,” he said.
Calling on some MBA classmates to help, Moore formed Gowns4Good, a nonprofit organization dedicated to repurposing obsolete 2020 graduation gowns as PPE for frontline emergency workers.
The idea was to use school graduation gowns rendered unnecessary in light of multiple graduation ceremonies cancelled as replacements for hospital gowns, a form of PPE that, like face masks, is also scarce.
The organization is just under a month old, Moore said, but has seen national donations pouring in.
“We have donations from 46 states, and embedded within those numbers we have about 4,500 gowns individually donated and 1,500 gowns were donated by our corporate partner Graduation Source,” he stated.
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The corresponding demand doesn’t appear to be slowing either; a total of 77,780 medical facilities across the country are reaching out requesting gowns from Gowns4Good, per data from the website. Data compiled by the Gowns4Good team shows that the most donations have been received from California, New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota.
Graduation gowns are uniquely suitable to act as substitutes for standard medical gowns. Moore notes that medical professionals would wear the floor-length graduation gown backwards to provide the same fluid-resistant barrier required in actual PPE. The graduation gowns also have sleeves and a higher-riding neckline to fully protect the torso.
This makes them more protective than the trash bags some health professionals have been forced to wear in lieu of gowns. Moore additionally checked that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations were followed when optioning graduation gowns as appropriate substitutes.
To further reduce the amount of time health care clinics have to wait, Gowns4Good lets donors select where they would like to send their gowns from a public list of facilities in need. Some 165 centers across the country, including hospitals, clinics and living facilities, are all part of the Gowns4Good network.
“By cutting out the middleman, it gets them in the hands of the medical providers faster,” Moore explains.
If you would like to make a donation or learn more about Gowns4Good, click here.
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