Mask4Jax: Flatten the Curve
By Saumil R. Oza, MD, FACC
Cardiac Electrophysiologist
Chief, Division of Cardiology
Director, The Atrial Fibrillation Institute
Director, Cardiovascular Research Program
Ascension/St. Vincents Medical Center- Jacksonville, FL
Masks4Jax was started in the early days of the US COVID19 pandemic in early April 2020. As the virus quickly spread in the largest US cities, we wanted to do what we could to protect our population here in Jacksonville and prevent overloading our healthcare system as was happening in Washington, New York, and Chicago. There was significant evidence that countries, where masks were worn by the majority of the population, fared much better than those that didn't. We also felt that universal mask-wearing would be instrumental in ending the quarantine and allowing our businesses to open again. With that goal, Masks4Jax was born.
We knew distribution would be challenging as we didn't want any central location where people would have to gather to pick up masks. Our initial efforts, helped in large part by an initial donation from Mr. J. Wayne Weaver, was to spend awareness by providing masks to restaurants to hand out to their own employees as well as their customers. We felt that this would make use of their large social media presence as well as provide a small boost to a struggling industry. We were able to expand our efforts once the CDC guidelines followed our recommendation of wearing a mask in public. We then went on to partner with the City of Jacksonville, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the JaxChamber to distribute over 500,000 cloth masks to the cities’ underserved populations.
We distributed through homeless shelters, local hospitals, and organizations such as Feeding Northeast Florida and the Duval County School Lunch Program. We hope that our efforts played a small part in helping our community cope with this terrible pandemic. There is no scientific controversy and it is now well established that, if a large portion of the population wears a mask, we can significantly reduce the spread of this virus. We continue to encourage people in our community to wear a mask when in public, socially distance, and wash their hands frequently. We thank the members of the Indo US Chamber who participated in our mask distribution program and encourage you all to require masking in your businesses.
Thank you,
Saumil and the Masks4Jax team