PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University men’s and women’s assistant water polo coach JJ Addison is staying busy outside the pool by serving as part of the school’s Healthy Ambassadors program in an effort to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic on campus.
For students and others who live, work or study on campus, navigating public health protocols in a way that promotes a healthy and safe community has come with a steep learning curve.
This fall, a new Healthy Ambassadors program on Brown’s campus has addressed both of those challenges concurrently as one element of Brown’s COVID-19 prevention and education initiatives.
The idea was generated by the University COVID-19 personnel working group and developed by the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity in collaboration with BWell Health Promotion. The program trains employees whose daily work responsibilities have been considerably altered since the beginning of the pandemic and redeploys them as Healthy Ambassadors for some shifts each week, with the rest of their time devoted to regular work responsibilities.
Due to the high level of anxiety and frustration brought on by dealing with the first global pandemic since the 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu outbreak, the Healthy Ambassadors aid in returning a sense by normalcy by making COVID-19 prevention protocols clear-cut, cheerful and community-oriented.
The nearly 70 other ambassadors in the program perform their shifts stationed at high-traffic sites on campus — the College Green, Simmons Quad, Friedman Hall and the Rockefeller Library, among others.
Responsibilities vary from one day to the next, but most time is spend guiding students to building entrance and exit pathways designed to minimize congregating, providing masks and hand sanitizer to those who may not have any, and reminding students about social distancing guidelines.
For Addison, serving in a capacity to aid others via coaching is a natural fit.
“I’m out here coaching people,” he said. Plus, being an ambassador has allowed for increased visibility of the thing he finds most important to the community during the pandemic: leading by example.
“That’s the easiest thing to do for all of us, and the most noticeable thing,” Addison said. “If you look around and see people doing the right thing, it’s easier for you to do the right thing.”
Information courtesy Brown University
