In a cardiovascular emergency, victims have seconds to minutes to have blood and oxygen circulated to their vital organs in order to survive. Basic Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) allows friends, family or bystanders to provide lifesaving circulation until help arrives. CPR skills are taught using the American Heart Association Friends and Family program. Only two hours are needed to learn this life saving skill.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide movement to teach everyone to be a first responder in a bleeding emergency, whether the bleeding is caused by a kitchen accident or a large scale disaster. Being able to control external bleeding is key to victim survival. This two hour, mostly hands on course teaches participants how to apply tourniquets and direct pressure, and to bandage wounds.

CPR Training Schedule

CPR trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Wednesday, September 20, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Monday, October 9, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Wednesday, November 8, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Monday, December 4, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

“Stop the Bleed” Training Schedule

“Stop the Bleed” trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Monday, September 25, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Wednesday, October 11, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Monday, November 6, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Wednesday, December 6, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

Registration Information

• Students, faculty and staff can register on the .
• Early registration is encouraged as each training can only accommodate eight (8) participants.

Additional Information

Please feel free to contact John Gurriell at the School of Nursing to request more information.

As part of the pilot initiative, School of Nursing faculty and students have held 28 screenings serving more than 250 community members. The communities being served are those where the most prominent health disparities exist, and in which residents have high morbidity or mortality risk from heart disease. Taking place in community spaces as well as on the University campus, the most recent screening was held on April 28 at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Orange.

“Our goal is to reduce and prevent cardiac disease by offering free screenings at local events to identify persons at risk, provide preventive education and refer at-risk individuals to affordable, appropriate follow-up care,” says School of Nursing Dean Janice Smolowitz. “We are grateful for this opportunity to address health inequities, while preparing our student nurses with crucial experiential learning in local communities.”

Associate Nursing Professor Mary Elizabeth Duffy manages the screenings and sees the benefit of being directly in the community. “The screenings provide hands-on, community-based training to our nursing students … It is wonderful to see our School of Nursing faculty and students working together to provide this service to educate community members about their risk for heart disease and the measures they can take to prevent it.”

“With the tremendous dearth of skilled nurses, ĚÇĐÄvlog is taking concrete steps to accomplish two important goals: providing care for patients today, and training the future nursing workforce in New Jersey,” says Michael Schmidt, executive director and chief executive officer of The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. “The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey is proud to partner with ĚÇĐÄvlog to support this innovative pilot initiative.”

Montclair collaborated with the West Orange Health Department to inform constituents of the screenings. Individuals were able to have their blood pressure, cholesterol and other risk
factors tested and have confidential healthcare conversations. They also received referrals to healthcare providers, along with follow-up after the event.

Building community

For Arielle Falcone ’23, who completed the pre-licensure Master of Science in Nursing in January, the screening event provided another opportunity to help others. “I am always grateful for volunteer opportunities, especially when it is directly beneficial and we can connect individuals with critical health resources.”

Falcone, who started her career working in research, neurology and computational psychiatry, enrolled in Montclair’s Nursing program because she wanted to have a direct impact on patient care. “During the pandemic, I felt I could do much more for the health of others and knew it was time for me to pursue nursing.” She is now licensed as a registered nurse in New Jersey and New York and works on an inpatient oncology unit, bone marrow transplant, at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Emily Woznick ’23, another recent graduate of the pre-licensure Master of Science in Nursing program, said the experience helped prepare her to be efficient in managing a large volume of patients and to navigate how to communicate and take care of a patient who doesn’t speak the same language. “It was terrific to be able to get the community experience,” she says. “This added practice to serve those in the community, especially those who may rely on it as their only check-up, was very rewarding.”

For students and faculty, the opportunity to serve is paramount.

“With joy and humility, we partner with our communities to educate and give access to healthcare,” shares Associate Nursing Professor Yanick Joseph. “As nurse educators, we pass on the legacy to our students by building community and doing selflessly the work required to maintain the social contract we inspire to enforce in all we do – to infuse active hope and collective healing.”

Associate Nursing Professor Mary Elizabeth Duffy (right) prepares for the screening at Holy Trinity Church in West Orange with Professor Courtney Reinisch.

Arielle Falcone ’23 MSN shares information on cardiovascular health and community resources with a screening participant.

Emily Woznick ’23 MSN (left) and Associate Professor Yanick Joseph (right) take a fingerstick sample to test for cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

Assistant Professor Patty McGaughey (standing) talks with School of Nursing students before a cardiac risk screening held on the Montclair campus.

Story by Director of Development Communications Laura Iandiorio. Photos by Mike Peters and John J. LaRosa.

In a cardiovascular emergency, victims have seconds to minutes to have blood and oxygen circulated to their vital organs in order to survive. Basic Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) allows friends, family or bystanders to provide lifesaving circulation until help arrives. CPR skills are taught using the American Heart Association Friends and Family program. Only two hours are needed to learn this life saving skill.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide movement to teach everyone to be a first responder in a bleeding emergency, whether the bleeding is caused by a kitchen accident or a large scale disaster. Being able to control external bleeding is key to victim survival. This two hour, mostly hands on course teaches participants how to apply tourniquets and direct pressure, and to bandage wounds.

CPR Training Schedule

CPR trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Wednesday, March 29, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Tuesday, April 25, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Tuesday, May 16, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

“Stop the Bleed” Training Schedule

“Stop the Bleed” trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Thursday, March 30, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Wednesday, April 26, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Thursday, May 18, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

Registration Information

• Students, faculty and staff can register on the .
• Early registration is encouraged as each training can only accommodate eight (8) participants.

Additional Information

Please feel free to contact John Gurriell at the School of Nursing to request more information.

In a cardiovascular emergency, victims have seconds to minutes to have blood and oxygen circulated to their vital organs in order to survive. Basic Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) allows friends, family or bystanders to provide lifesaving circulation until help arrives. CPR skills are taught using the American Heart Association Friends and Family program. Only two hours are needed to learn this life saving skill.

“Stop the Bleed” is a nationwide movement to teach everyone to be a first responder in a bleeding emergency, whether the bleeding is caused by a kitchen accident or a large scale disaster. Being able to control external bleeding is key to victim survival. This two hour, mostly hands on course teaches participants how to apply tourniquets and direct pressure, and to bandage wounds.

CPR Training Schedule

CPR trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Tuesday, November 29, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Tuesday, December 13, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253
• Tuesday, December 13, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

“Stop the Bleed” Training Schedule

“Stop the Bleed” trainings are offered on the following dates:

• Tuesday, November 29, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., School of Nursing, Room 253

Registration Information

• Students, faculty and staff can register on the .
• Early registration is encouraged as each training can only accommodate eight (8) participants.

Additional Information

Please feel free to contact John Gurriell at the School of Nursing to request more information.

Our on-campus flu clinic is open to all members of the campus community.

Free On-Campus Flu Clinic

The University Health Center and the School of Nursing are sponsoring free on-campus clinics on following dates:

• Tuesday, November 2, 8:30 a.m. – 2 p.m., Student Center, Ballrooms.
• Thursday, November 4, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., Student Center, Ballrooms.
• Thursday, November 18, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., Center for Environmental and Life Sciences (CELS), Atrium.

Registration Information

To help speed the process, please:

• . (Walk-in appointments will also be offered intermittently throughout each day while supply lasts.)
• Complete the Influenza Consent Form and print/fill out/bring a copy to your appointment.

Safety Protocols

When coming to your appointment please remember to follow the University Safety Protocols:

• Fill out Hawk Check.
• Wear your mask.

Associate Professor Courtney Reinisch is coordinating the School of Nursing’s response, adding COVID-19 hours into the senior practicum. “In order to return to our lives, we need to get the global population inoculated,” Reinisch says. “I thought this was a great opportunity for students and faculty to respond locally and give back to the community.”

Mark Rodrigues, left, sets up an Essex County vaccination station, while Theresa Migliaccio prepares to administer the Moderna vaccine.

Among the nursing students is Theresa Migliaccio, a mother of five who balances family life with her classwork and weekend hours as a registered nurse at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Juggling it all during the pandemic has been difficult, she admits. “You definitely learn your resilience and your limitations.”

But taking on even more at the vaccination clinic has actually eased her stress. “It’s made the pandemic not as devastating because at least I feel I’m doing something to help.”

RN to BSN students Jinwon Woo and Danica Arcena at the Essex County site.

On a recent shift at the Essex County immunization center in West Orange, New Jersey, Migliaccio was teamed with Mark Rodrigues – both are RNs set to graduate this spring from Montclair State’s RN to BSN program. As they prepared their vaccination room, they precisely readied syringes, making sure not to waste a single drop of the vaccine.

Throughout the country, inoculating people has been hampered by vaccine shortages and a complicated registration process, but Essex County’s response has been a bright spot in the rollout. Inside the former Kmart store in West Orange, any thoughts of the challenges people may have had getting their appointment are forgotten as they receive their shots of hope, Migliaccio says. “They cry, they’re overwhelmed and they’re so thankful.”

RN to BSN student Valentina Valencia at the Essex County site.

Rodrigues, who worked as an electrician before a career change to nursing, says this process has taken him out of his pandemic comfort zone. “Occasionally you go out for your shopping, but everything is so methodical about how you spend your time outside,” he says.

At the vaccination center, Rodrigues has a system for the way he sets up equipment, organizing Band-Aids and alcohol wipes in groups of 10 to match the number of doses in each vial. “We want to be prepared so we can more fluidly deal with patients,” he says. Rodrigues has a gentle rapport to ease any anxiety people may be feeling. Often, they haven’t even realized they’ve been given the injection.

The coordinated efforts pay off as the classmates inoculated more than 100 people on their shift, about 10% of all the Moderna doses given that day. “It’s exceptionally rewarding,” Rodrigues says, “knowing we are putting people on track for getting back some sort of normalcy.”

Associate Professors Marybeth Duffy, left, and Courtney Reinisch.

Their experience illustrates how Montclair State’s nursing faculty and students are engaged in the campaign to inoculate against the virus. Essex County has five vaccination sites spread across the county and the School of Nursing is joining in the effort to vaccinate citizens by participating in a variety of roles.

Faculty members and students are also assisting senior citizens with vaccination registration at a senior apartment setting. When the on-site clinic opened, undergraduates assisted with temperature checks, social distancing and monitoring. Associate Professor Marybeth Duffy, who participated in this outreach, helped register community members for appointments and answered questions about the safety of the vaccines. “They need reassurance that taking the shot would be better than not,” she says.

The School of Nursing is continuously looking for ways to serve the community and plans to help vaccinate homebound residents in partnership with the West Orange Health Department. This faculty-undergraduate effort will include students assisting with making calls to individuals, registering and scheduling them for appointments and going to their homes.

Story by Staff Writer Marilyn Joyce Lehran

Behind the scenes, academics and practitioners such as Nastassia Davis, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing; Kaitlin Mulcahy, associate director of the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health (CAECMH); and Jill Wodnick, a doula who has been the cornerstone of much of Montclair State’s maternal health efforts through CAECMH, were among those interviewed to help craft the state’s strategic plan. And, through their work at the University, they will be among an army of health practitioners and educators across the state helping to see its goals to fruition.

According to statistics cited in Murphy’s plan, New Jersey is currently ranked 47th in the nation for maternal deaths and has one of the widest racial disparities for both maternal and infant mortality: “A Black mother in New Jersey is seven times more likely than a white mother to die from maternity-related complications, and a Black baby is over three times more likely than a white baby to die before his or her first birthday.”

The plan “aims to reduce maternal mortality by 50% over five years and eliminate racial disparities in birth outcomes.”

One year ago, educational leaders from Montclair State’s Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health, School of Nursing, and Department of Public Health discussed how the University’s cross-discipline approach is identifying, addressing and hopefully solving the myriad of complex problems that stand in the way of improved outcomes for mothers and infants.

“Our center through Jill’s advocacy has a seat at many discussions of what the strategic plan is talking about,” says Mulcahy. For example, CAECMH has been asked to be part of the , a federal grant awarded to multidisciplinary state departments. Wodnick is providing technical assistance to the New Jersey Department of Health on issues related to the Nurture NJ Strategic Plan, including childbirth education, reducing unnecessary caesarean sections, and increasing the childbirth education and doula care across the state.

Mulcahy adds, “We’ve also been asked to sit on other panels in the maternal health space,” such as , that “are looking to improve birth outcomes and developmental outcomes for low-income children and families in our state over the next three years.”

Mulcahy gives much credit to Wodnick in bringing the University to the table on the subject of maternal health.

“Jill is looked at as being the expert consultant, the expert technical assistant,” Mulcahy says. “She has influenced Mrs. Murphy’s thinking, and we spend a lot of time with Mrs. Murphy’s policy advisors as well on these issues.”

Wodnick is quick to share the limelight.

“There are many people in different multidisciplinary departments, and we find each other.” She cites Melanie Shefchik, instructional specialist, Department of Public Health: “She wrote the maternal infant plan for the City of Clifton – with a number of undergraduate and graduate Montclair State Public Health students – and that is a city-specific maternal infant health plan that focuses on increasing home visitation funding for doula care.”

In January 2020, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy spoke at the third annual NJ Maternal Health Day at ĚÇĐÄvlog.

Meanwhile, Davis, in both her role as assistant professor in the School of Nursing and as founder of the , was invited to speak at the introduction of the strategic plan in January. Last year, Davis introduced a new maternal and child health class for School of Nursing students. She reports, “It’s a dynamic curriculum and we’re adjusting it to respond to current social and political dynamics in our local communities.” Davis has also invited Wodnick to provide Lamaze childbirth education for this coming semester when students perform a clinical rotation.

“Our curriculum blends clinical experiences in the community, a concept that is unique to our program,” says Davis. “Students get exposed to the lived experiences of the families they serve as well as the social determinants of health that impact them. In addition to the Lamaze class, students will visit a local WIC [] center, prenatal clinic, and maternal child health home visitation program to name a few. This year, students will write a perinatal disparities paper where they will take a deeper look at the disparities in maternal child health from a national and local perspective. It was important to me that the course was infused with reproductive justice and cultural humility so that our future nurses have the social awareness to impact change as they enter the field.”

Mulcahy notes that CAECMH’s work extends beyond maternal and infant health.

“When we look at maternal infant health, we’re also looking at maternal infant relational health and making sure that there are services and policies and legislation in place to also look at that emerging relationship that begins in pregnancy,” Mulcahy says. “Our center and our University are looked to as policy and service experts in the aspect of maternal infant health that is moving from biophysical to the relationship.”

“I think one of the strengths that Montclair State has is that there’s so much interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate student engagement from a clinical perspective, from the School of Nursing, to Public Health, to the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health,” says Wodnick. “People who are interested in improving maternity care can get policy, clinical and community internships and field work here at Montclair State – the interdisciplinary ability to do policy system legislative change concurrent with all of the other academic interdisciplinary partners.”

Wodnick’s role with the Center is publicly and privately funded. She notes the generosity of the DeTura family which bestowed another gift in December to the Montclair State Foundation, helping to extend free childbirth education through the University. “We’re now doing it online too, because of the COVID environment, and we’re actually able to touch hundreds of more people in terms of childbirth education than I was doing in person.”

Story by Staff Writer Mary Barr Mann.

The End Hunger 3.6 Event aims to bring together community volunteers to package nutritious ready-to-cook meals, which are distributed to organizations that feed the hungry throughout New Jersey.

“For the School of Nursing, addressing food insecurity and helping people live healthy lives is what we are about,” says Janice Smolowitz, Dean, School of Nursing. Since 2017, the School of Nursing has actively participated in the campus community garden and donated fresh produce to the Red Hawk Food Pantry. In 2019, Associate Professor Andrew Scanlon pedaled in a 200-mile charity bike ride to raise funds and awareness for the Red Hawk Food Pantry.

The End Hunger 3.6 Event was founded in 2016 by members of the Madison Rotary Club. When asked how the effort began, Ellsworth Havens, Chairperson of End Hunger 3.6, explained, “Our club members wanted to develop a new program that addressed needs closer to home. We noticed that food insecurity was significantly impacting our surrounding communities.”

Since being established, the Madison Rotary Club has hosted three End Hunger 3.6 events and packaged over 700,000 meals that have been distributed to 40 local organizations that aid food insecure individuals. “We estimate the program will package upwards of 500,000 meals this year—A number of meals will be provided to the Red Hawk Food Pantry and the Montclair Salvation Army,” says Havens.

If you are interested in learning more about End Hunger 3.6, visit: .

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is another skill that can save a life. Basic CPR allows bystanders to provide lifesaving circulation until help arrives. CPR skills are taught using the American Heart Association Friends and Family program.

When

• Friday, February 21, 2:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
• Friday, March 6, 2:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Please note that the Stop the Bleed classes originally scheduled for April 24 and May 22 have been cancelled due to growing community concerns regarding COVID-19

Where

School of Nursing, Simulation Lab (2nd Floor)

How Much?

This lifesaving training is free of charge. Certificates will be issued to all participants. Group sizes ranging from 10-20 can easily be accommodated, with a total of three hours needed for the entire program.

Have Questions?

Please contact John Gurriell at 973-655-3617 or gurriellj@montclair.edu to register for a class or request more information.

When & Where

• Friday, February 14, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.
• School of Nursing, Lobby

First-Come, First-Served

There are 80 available doses. No registration is required, but it is first-come, first-served.

How Much?

The shots are free to Montclair State students. Just bring your University ID Card and CWID.

Faculty and staff must go to Red Hawk Central and pre-pay $20.00 (cash or check) and bring the receipt on Friday in order to get the shot.