Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee

COVID-19 Health Coordinator at Camp Whitcomb-Mason

by Ruth Claycomb

Background

I worked as a health coordinator at a summer camp for kids ages 6-14 through the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee and sponsored by Americorps. In this position, I served as the coordinator for medication and first aid needs for racially and economically diverse campers and staff members, as well as worked to communicate and encourage healthy lifestyles for kids. This role also included developing kids’ leadership and teambuilding skills through outdoor activities and environmental education.

Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee

The Boys and Girls Club of America is a national organization that has many local chapters in all 50 states and serves over four million children nationwide (Boys & Girls Clubs of America 2022). The mission statement of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee is:

“Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee provides young people with programs and resources that help them achieve academic success, make healthy life choices, and foster the skills they need to reach their full potential.” (Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee 2023)

One of the core values of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee (BGCM) is to empower children to make positive health and wellness decisions throughout their life. BGCM meets this through education and learning opportunities for children in its clubs.

My Work

My daily work at camp involved daily COVID-19 health checks. Every morning, I would take the temperature of each camper and staff member and would ask each person if they were experiencing any symptoms of COVID, had recently traveled out of the state, or had been in close contact with anyone with COVID. This provided health checks that were important to the camp being able to stay open and COVID free during the summer of 2020. Along with this role, I was in charge of keeping track of all medications that campers and staff under the age of 18 needed or were taking. This role involved reading through camper health paperwork and making note of health concerns for each person. Often this role involved contacting campers’ parents to discuss medications or health concerns that a camper was experiencing while at camp. I also served as the medical first responder. When a camper was feeling ill, it was my role to take care of the child and decide what action should proceed. This would often involve providing a space for the child to lay down and feel better, a phone call home to talk to their parents, or an administration of medicine.

Lessons Learned

One of my roles in this position was doing three-times daily health checks of all the staff members at the camp. Before every meal, I would measure everyone’s temperature and ask them a few health screening questions. As the summer went on, people became more relaxed about this requirement, and many people would miss meals and not get their COVID screening. While this is an understandable pattern, it put the camp at higher risk for a COVID outbreak because we were all close contacts of each other. My role was also complicated because the people who I needed to screen were my peers, or people in higher roles than me at the camp. Because of this, it was difficult for me to encourage people to remember to show up for their COVID screening. I felt like I was neglecting doing my job correctly if I wasn’t completing the health checks, but I did not know how to navigate the social space of people who were my peers.

In order to solve this problem, I talked to my supervisors about what had been going on and how I was having trouble dealing with this. This was helpful to solve the problem because they were able to know how I was feeling and recognize what was going on in the moment in order to aid in encouraging people to show up to health screenings. I also decided to start speaking up to other staff members and checking in with them as a reminder, and to see what I could do to help them get their health checks done. While there were still times over the summer when staff members would skip a COVID screening, I felt more able to check in with these workers in a respectful manner in order to keep everyone as safe as possible.

I learned the importance of communication and opening up to others about what is going on when encountering an obstacle or challenge, because others cannot provide you with support if they do not know what is going on. This was an important lesson for me and my graduate studies and beyond because when dealing with multiple people who might have different ideas, expectations, or roles, it can be challenging to navigate between everybody. Through open communication and honesty, I learned that each member of a lab or class can feel respected and their ideas valued.

References

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, December 21). Boys & girls clubs of america. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_%26_Girls_Clubs_of_America

Boys & girls clubs of greater milwaukee. Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. (2023, March 17). Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.bgcmilwaukee.org/

Ruth Claycomb

My name is Ruth Claycomb and I am originally from Bloomington, Minnesota. I am a Biology major with an emphasis in Biochemistry as well as a minor in Chemistry and a concentration in Community and Global Health. During my time at Macalester, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Copenhagen in the Spring of 2022, as well as work in the labs of Dr. Keith Kuwata and Dr. Kathryn Splan in the chemistry department that has inspired my interest in research. Outside of academics and research, I enjoy being outside, singing, and running. After Macalester, I will be pursuing my PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Pittsburgh.

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