For more than a century, Fairview Hospital has been a safety net for the Great Barrington community, who appreciate the facility’s small-town feel combined with its nationwide network of care.
We all know that yearly physicals are important for adults—it’s the one time someone’s going to check your cholesterol, after all. But even for those near-invincible young kids and adolescents, yearly visits are just as important as your own. And with the pandemic disrupting both parents’ and kids’ schedules over the last year-and-a-half, it’s vital for kids to get up-to-date for both wellness visits and vaccinations before they go back to school this fall.
In the summer of 2019, Liz Glover Wilson had just opened the second location of her burgeoning Gardiner yoga studio and wellness campus, Stone Wave Yoga, in Poughkeepsie. Like so many other small business owners in the Hudson Valley, she had no way of knowing that only months later her entire business would fundamentally change. With the pandemic’s economic and personal challenges constantly at her door, however, yoga remained the one thing that Glover Wilson knew she could count on. “A lot of the students who stayed with us this last year are hungry to learn more about the yoga tool kit because they’re seeing that it really does work,” she says.
click to enlarge If you've scheduled a doctor's appointment in the last year, chances are you've had a virtual appointment. With hospitals and medical practices on high alert for the spread of Covid, minor ailments and health concerns that didn't require an in-person visit shifted largely onto computers and smartphones, where a provider could talk you through your symptoms and even provide a diagnosis from the comfort of your own home. It's hard to believe, then, that prior to the pandemic, many healthcare providers simply didn't offer virtual appointments. "We didn't do telehealth because New York State didn't cover it at the time," says Dr. Ronald Pope, Vice President of Medical Services, Care Centers for Columbia Memorial Health (CMH). "There were many states that had been working with telehealth previously, but every state was different, and New York had to ramp up pretty quickly when Covid hit."
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Josephine Occhiogrossi being vaccinated in February at the Theodore D. Young Community Center in Greenburgh. She turned 100 on March 21. There's nothing special about Greenburgh, a suburban town of about 88,000 in Westchester County, to suggest that it would be the incubator for one of the state's most ambitious pandemic volunteer projects. Unless you count Paul Feiner, the town's indefatigable supervisor. Feiner has helmed town government in Greenburgh for 30 years, re-elected again and again on the strength of an old-fashioned belief: that government ought to fix people's problems. It's easy to spot Feiner's car around town: It's the one with a taxi-style roof sign on top, printed with Feiner's cell phone number and the slogan "Mobile Problem Solver." "He's like the ice cream man, but for community outreach," says Kenny Herzog, a volunteer with Greenburgh's COVID Angels. In January, the group was barely an idea. By March, it was a national model, a fleet-footed hybrid of volunteerism and good government with a system for putting local talent to work solving local problems.
click to enlarge In August 2019, Jessica Eaton's boyfriend talked her into taking a big leap: moving in. The pair had been dating for about a year and a half, shuttling between her place in the Catskills and his in Westchester. Eaton (not her real name) is a single mom to a teenager who was going through a rough patch, and her boyfriend suggested they move in with him for a fresh start in a new school district. "I was reluctant because I'm used to being independent," she recalls. "But he told me that he wasn't going to be spending much time at home as he traveled a lot for business. I was willing to give it a try, especially for my daughter." The first few weeks of cohabiting went well and the affluent community had its perks. Still, Eaton and her teen had their ups and downs as they tried to gain a toehold on their new life.
Words can distract from the thing they represent. Publisher Jason Stern finds that under the stress of oppressive conditions we can become really present, and, in presence, we can be impartial.