Bernards Leads Fight Against H1N1

It takes a lot of work to administer over 8,000 vaccinations in a few short months.

The Bernards Township Health Department has vaccinated 8,105 individuals to date, the most of any health department in Somerset County. To ensure a successful operation, many individuals had to contribute tirelessly, and at a H1N1 "Thank You" Luncheon at Basking Ridge Country Club on Wednesday, Bernards Health Director Lucy Forgione took the time to thank many of them.

"Does everybody remember the last week in April of 2009?" Forgione said to the volunteers and staff that made the vaccination clinics possible. "Do you remember that feeling when we heard on the news that this new form of virus was in Mexico, and it was potentially coming our way? … It was terrible."

"We and others in the public health sector have been planning for this for quite a while. If you all remember, back in 2006 we started a pandemic flu committee … When I reflect back and think on the fact that we have been organized since 2006, and we have been talking about some kind of pandemic coming our way, I have to say that what we did was build a good team," Forgione said. "Because if you don't have a good team behind you, I don't think you will be successful."

Forgione said that early in the process the department was under a lot of stress to meet the communities needs, yet individuals on her staff continued to step up and help.

"My mother has a saying in Italian … it means you throw it crooked and it comes back straight," Forgione said. "It was truly the most amazing thing … everybody one at a time said you know, we should just do what we do best."

Joel Coyne and Cynthia Lee, both registered environmental health specialists, started taking temperatures of the vaccine and creating logs. Lee also worked on a computerized appointment system to help organize the early clinics, which treated 600 to 700 patients in about three hours.

"It's amazing that we could get through that many people in that short of time," Lee said.

Bernards Animal Control Officer Sharon Wilkinson pitched in by helping to organize supplies and load trucks, as well as administer the all-important post vaccine treats.

"I was in charge of lollypops," Wilkinson said to laughs at the luncheon. "As you all know that was crucial. But, I just really want to say because of Lucy's great leadership we all did a good job and we all pulled together."

Data entry was done by Kris Roser, Judy O'Connell, Ryan McCloskey and Lorraine DeGrande, and the health department also thanked two doctors for helping in the H1N1 fight.

Dr. Thomas Porter helped to train the VNA nurses in administering the vaccine – the nurses provided the backbone of the operation, immunizing countless patients since clinics opened last fall – and Dr. Bill Darrow attended nearly every clinic answering patient questions.

Forgione asked Darrow to recount his favorite question from the 20 plus clinics he attended.

"An extremely smartly dressed woman in a Bernardsville clinic came up and said, 'Are you the answer man?'" Darrow said. "I said 'I'll try.' She said, 'Can I ask you any kind of question?'

"I said sure. And this is scout's honor, she said, "Am I going to get married again?'" Darrow said.

Helping to get the free help needed to run the clinics, Cheryl Komline and Tricia Cowell organize over 100 volunteers to assist the health department over the last several months.

"We scheduled people to make sure that they were coming, badgered them to come … and taught them what they needed to do when they came," Komline said. Cowell added, "We had some really great volunteers who came to almost all of the clinics … It was fun and they were just a great bunch of people. … We couldn't have done it without them."

On the home front, health department secretaries Marie LaMaire and Denise Paternoster handled the crush of calls and information requests from the public at the height of the H1N1 scare.

"The phones just never stopped," LaMaire said. "It would be a nice slow day if we got 40 messages in the morning – that was a quiet day."

"We tried to gather the information the best we could so we could answer the questions the best we could," said Paternoster. Forgione said, "I could always tell how well my office was running by how many phone calls came to me. And I have to say they really had very few things coming up to me because they were my frontline people who took care of things."

Jen Dunning and Kathy Kelly helped to alleviate some of the rush to get information by handling the health department's public relations.

"Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that we had a Web site and that we did all of the PR the way we did … that was really golden, it allowed us to do our job and it channeled the people to the right place," Forgione said.

After Forgione and her crew celebrated their work at the luncheon, the Bernards Health Department held the first of their April immunization clinics on Wednesday from 4 – 5:30 p.m. Forgione says that the virus could make a comeback this spring or summer, and the health department will continue to protect people from it.