As COVID-19 began reaching the North Olympic Peninsula, face mask supplies became scarce. Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community (OPHCC) partners answered the call from the County Public Health Officer to supply homemade face masks.
OPHCC Co-founder Monica Dixon and OPHCC Partner Jim Stoffer jumped into action and created the Facebook group Sequim Face Masks Challenge. Practically overnight, they activated an army of people to sew masks, along with coordinators, suppliers and drivers, almost exclusively due to prior relationships established through partnerships in OPHCC. They worked for months to provide thousands of cloth face masks and dozens of cloth hospital gowns to Clallam County Emergency Management for distribution throughout the county.
Our model was so effective that representatives from larger urban areas in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco contacted us to learn more about how we were able to mobilize a rural county so rapidly and how prior relationship-building became so critical during this emergency.