STANDING AGAINST COVID-19

Tuskegee University’s recognition of the need to keep the institution’s community safe through the pandemic prompted specific mitigating actions to create a controlled environment and manage the spread of COVID-19 during campus interactions.

The university created a Public Health Advisory Council (PHAC) to assist in developing and implementing mitigation strategies. Attorney Crystal James led this effort. One of the earliest and most significant challenges recognized by the PHAC was the shortage of test kits to perform Polymer Chain Reaction (PCR) testing, and advocacy to increase access began. In April 2020, Tuskegee University partnered with the Alabama Department of Public Health and Macon County Health Department to provide the transport media (test kits) to alleviate the shortage of coronavirus testing in Macon County and other Black Belt Counties (BBC) in Alabama.

“We discovered the guidelines for making the media used in the COVID-19 test kits, called Viral Transport Media, were available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website,” said Dr. Deloris Alexander, a professor at Tuskegee University. “Once the guidelines were shared with the Tuskegee University Community Health Taskforce, there was great enthusiasm for determining if we could help increase the amount of testing conducted in the state, especially in the rural areas and in Alabama Black Belt Counties.”

“To be in a position to bring students, faculty, and staff back to the face-to-face environment, we knew that we needed to be able to conduct testing for not only our students but for the entire community,” said Crystal James, Vice President External Affairs and General Counsel, Special Assistant to the President for COVID-19 Recovery.

Tuskegee University partnered with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to facilitate re-entry testing for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. However, the delay from sample collection to test results was problematic in managing the contact tracing protocols necessary to keep the environment safe. The ThermoFisher “Just Project” was initiated to build capacity at 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities to conduct PCR testing and serve sister institutions in their region. This generous gift provided the equipment and reagents necessary to set up a COVID-19 laboratory free of charge. To be in a position to receive the gift from ThermoFisher, we needed to obtain approval to operate a diagnostic laboratory under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). The generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which partnered with HBCUs in the “Just Project” to cover personnel costs and infrastructure development, allowed us to stand up a fully staffed CLIA-certified laboratory on Feb. 8, 2021.

Recognizing that we needed to provide as many layers of mitigation as possible to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on the campus, once vaccines became available, The Tuskegee University Health Disparities Diagnostic Center purchased the necessary cold storage units to become an Alabama State-approved vaccination storage site. Weekly vaccination clinics were held on campus beginning in the Fall of 2021, providing convenient access to the campus community and clinical training for our nursing students.