Feinberg
Northwestern Medicine | Northwestern University | Faculty Profiles

News Center

  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Home » Medical Student Tricia Pendergrast Honored as Crain’s Notable Healthcare Hero
Education News

Medical Student Tricia Pendergrast Honored as Crain’s Notable Healthcare Hero

By Melissa RohmanMar 9, 2021
Share
Facebook Twitter Email
Second-year medical student Tricia Pendergrast has been included in Crain’s Chicago Business 2021 Notable Healthcare Heroes list for co-founding and operating the non-profit organization GetMePPEChicago.

Second-year medical student Tricia Pendergrast has been included in Crain’s Chicago Business 2021 Notable Healthcare Heroes list for co-founding and operating GetMePPEChicago, a non-profit organization that collects and ethically distributes donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare and community organizations across the city.

The list honors remarkable individuals and teams from Chicago-area hospitals and health systems serving their communities. She was nominated by Ronald Hirsch, MD, an internal medicine physician based in Elgin, Ill., who has been following the organization’s efforts on social media since it was established last year.

“Every time we get recognized for our work, it’s another opportunity to raise awareness that the lack of PPE is still an issue. For me personally, this is another opportunity to make people aware that we’re still out here, we’re still working trying to disseminate PPE and that this is still going on,” Pendergrast said.

Last March, when COVID-19 began to spread widely, and in Chicago specifically, Pendergrast and her peers felt compelled to help their medical colleagues who were severely struggling to obtain necessary PPE. The organization, which has expanded to include various services to help the community, is run by medical student volunteers from Northwestern, Rosalind Franklin University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rush University and Loyola University.

To date, the organization has donated more than 800,000 units of PPE to hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, community organizations, homeless shelters and mutual aid groups across Chicago.

Pendergrast said that helping to establish and run the organization has been a rewarding experience, from meeting local volunteers that deliver PPE donations across the city to collaborating with organizations in Chicago and Northwestern to raise money to purchase high-demand PPE items.

On the other hand, she said, it can also often be challenging and frustrating.

“The issue is what it’s always been: knowing that we’re filling this gap that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. There’s no reason a bunch of medical students should be a lifeline for nurses or a team of residents,” Pendergrast said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, what began as an access issue quickly evolved into an issue of resources and social capital for many groups that needed PPE, according to Pendergrast.

To address this head on, Pendergrast and her co-founders collaborated with two bioethicists to create a proactive organizational contact strategy that would help the organization prioritize certain areas of Chicago that needed PPE based on a zip code’s number of COVID-19 cases and mortality rate, service to vulnerable populations, access to healthcare resources and other epidemiologic principles.

“We didn’t want who an organization knew to be a limiting factor in what amount of PPE they had, so we recognized that as an issue early on,” Pendergrast said. “I wish the numbers didn’t make our choices so easy, because there are glaringly obvious communities that need focus from our resources.”

With almost a year since COVID-19 touched ground in Chicago, Pendergrast said that the disease has only served to bring pre-existing issues and inequities to the surface or exacerbate them entirely.

“A really important principle for all of us to remember is that the only thing COVID has brought is the actual illness; the social issues, the inequities, they were here long before it got to Chicago,” Pendergrast said.

GetMePPEChicago is a 501(c)3 non-profit sponsored by The Pilsen Social Health Initiative. Follow  GetMePPEChicago’s efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and at #GetMePPEChicago.

For more information about how to make a donation or request PPE, visit GetMePPEChicago’s website.

COVID-19 Public Health Student News Students
Share. Facebook Twitter Email

Related Posts

AOA Honors New Members

Mar 20, 2023

Celebrating Feinberg’s 2023 Match Day

Mar 17, 2023

Future Directions in Continuing Medical Education

Mar 14, 2023

Comments are closed.

Latest News

Hormone Therapy Plus Current Treatments Improves Survival in Prostate Cancer

Mar 22, 2023

How ChatGPT Has, and Will Continue to, Transform Scientific Research

Mar 21, 2023

New Directions for HIV Treatment

Mar 21, 2023

Humans are Not Just Big Mice: Identifying Science’s Muscle-Scaling Problem

Mar 20, 2023

AOA Honors New Members

Mar 20, 2023
  • News Center Home
  • Categories
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
  • News Archives
  • About Us
Flickr Photos
20230315_NM036
20230315_NM046
20230315_NM134
20230315_NM205
20230315_NM206
20230315_NM132
20230315_NM130
20230315_NM082
20230315_NM063
20230315_NM058
20230315_NM030
20230315_NM038

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

RSS Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr YouTube Instagram
Copyright © 2023 Northwestern University
  • Contact Northwestern University
  • Disclaimer
  • Campus Emergency Information
  • Policy Statements

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.