Aaron Troy, MPH, Nina Singh, Anya Krok, MPhil, Drew Adler, Paxton Voigt, Emma Lang, Ally Covello, and Jenna Reich
New York University Grossman School of Medicine
New York City has been an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 200,000 confirmed cases and 17,000 confirmed deaths. The city’s institutions and organizations have mounted a response as rapidly evolving as the challenge, and as multifaceted as the NYC population. Early in the surge, as NYC medical students, we struggled to keep track of the daily deluge of policies, logistics, and resources coming from disparate sources and written in technical language. We sought to solve this problem with NYCOVID Connect, a comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible online guide that connects NYC residents with COVID-19 community resources, policy updates, health information, and, most importantly, each other.
The NYU Grossman School of Medicine COVID-19 Task Force launched this project as the NYC COVID-19 Information and Resource Sheet, based on similar efforts in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In a Google Doc, we collated NYC-specific information and resources categories including: “Policy Updates,” “Facility Closures and Public Transport,” “Food and Housing,” “Mental Health and Domestic Violence,” and more. Volunteer editors were recruited from the Task Force to update each section weekly, and translators were recruited from the broader community of the Task Force members’ contacts.
In late March, the COVID-19 Task Force was restructured, and a formal project team was created. The team included our Communications Head, a Content Lead, Dissemination Leads, Web Leads, and a Translation Lead. Each Lead managed a team of NYC student volunteers who served as editors, designers, or translators.
This team took three key steps to broaden our reach: created a website (www.NYCOVIDConnect.com), created an Instagram page (@nycovidconnect), and rebranded as NYCOVID Connect. The team also created a daily workflow: first content editors write their updates, then the content lead adds them to our internal Google Doc and Slack, then the dissemination team updates the website and creates Instagram posts. At the end of every week, all changes are translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Bengali, Korean, and Yiddish.
In the months since its founding, NYCOVID Connect has grown to include forty-two pages of up-to-date, organized information and resources. The Instagram page has released over one-hundred-and-twenty unique posts in content areas including Daily Updates, Scientific Research, Public Health, and Community Resources. We also ran a question-and-answer service using Instagram stories, in which a team of medical students answered over 50 questions sent in from our followers.
The website has averaged 200 visits per week, with half of visitors reaching the website through the URL and the other half referred from Facebook, Instagram, or Google. 65% of visitors are in New York City, and 50% are accessing our mobile-friendly site using a cell phone or tablet. The ‘Getting Tested’ page has garnered the most attention followed by ‘Policy Updates.’ Instagram posts directing people to the website successfully increase traffic to the relevant pages, in one case tripling the weekly views of our ‘Getting Tested’ page.
Our Instagram account has more than 1,600 followers, predominantly New Yorkers (~60%) aged 24-35 (~60%). Preliminary data suggests that Public Health, Scientific Research and Daily Update posts attract the most likes and shares. Daily Update and Public Health posts have generated the most traffic to the account and website. Lastly, hashtags significantly increases the number of times the post is seen.
Going forward, we will adapt this platform to fit the unpredictable challenges COVID-19 will pose to New Yorkers. We will also take advantage of newly available in-person opportunities to disseminate this resource, including paper flyers and discussions with patients.
NYCOVID Connect harnessed medical students’ dedication, knowledge, and collaborative spirit to create a product with the power to improve the lives of millions. We hope our process will serve as a model for those aiming to support cities’ responses to large-scale challenges and movements now and in the future.
