BBC Africa's Ashley Lime demonstrates tips from experts on how to stay positive during the pandemic.
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Friday, April 24, 2020
College Board Surprises High School Seniors with $40K Scholarships While Sheltering in Place
School closures are impacting the lives of students and families in more than one way. And COVID-19’s economic impact has many parents and guardians questioning whether or not they will be able to send their child to college. In efforts to support students and families across the nation, the College Board recently announced a new scholarship worth $40,000.
The College Board Complete Your Journey Scholarship is open to high school juniors and seniors who complete six simple college planning steps (Build a College List, Practice for the SAT, Complete the FAFSA, Improve your SAT score, Strengthen your College List, Apply to College) to earn scholarships from $500 to $2,000. Students who complete all six qualify for the $40K Complete Your Journey Scholarship.
As the class of 2020 faces the realities of finishing out their high school careers at home, the College Board was able to surprise 25 recipients with its first-ever $40K Complete Your Journey Scholarship and bring them some much-needed news to celebrate. To make the moment even more special, the College Board worked with parents to have its CEO, David Coleman, and the Head of College and Career Access, Steve Bumbaugh, to make surprise Skype calls to as many students as possible.
Take a look at the heartwarming surprises
In a statement released by the College Board, Coleman said, “To those students who may have counted themselves out of scholarship opportunities, this program is for you. There is so much more talent out there than we can see,” said Coleman. “We want all students to see themselves as scholars, no matter where they began. College planning does not need to be daunting. These 25 students took one simple step, and then another, until they reached their goals. We encourage the class of 2021 to follow their lead.”
Claudia Gore of Newport News, Virginia, was excited and filled with gratitude and thanksgiving when College Board CEO David Coleman called to surprise her son Nyzaiah with news that he was a $40,000 recipient. Gore shared, “He’s not going to walk [at graduation], he can’t go to prom. All those special moments have been taken away. This is a moment to just see his face light up. He’s worked so hard, he deserves it.” Nyzaiah, who wants to study law and African American studies, says his father is especially proud of his passion for learning, because members of their family “do not usually go to college, much less finish high school.”
Meet Three of the Winners
Nyzaiah Gore — Newport News, VA, undecided but wants to attend UVA:
(Courtesy: Nyzaiah Gore)
Gore sits on his school’s leadership team and is the student representative on the district school board. He’s a member of the Warwick High Principal’s Advisory Committee, Model UN, and the Battle of the Brains academic team. The district asked him to be a student speaker at orientation for new teachers. He writes poetry and he’s known around school for surprising others. Eighty percent of students in Nyzaiah’s school are eligible for free/reduced lunch. Many students feel they won’t get to go to college because of the cost. His principal says this scholarship will be “life-changing.”
“My college career is important to me because as a lawyer, I want to be able to advocate for those that are misrepresented, while African Americans undergo racial discrimination and prejudice within the law, I believe that I would be able to help the misfortunate. Outside of that, college is another opportunity to learn— but not only that, college is another opportunity to shape my learning! My dad always told me that “this isn’t normal”— he was referencing the fact that people within my family do not usually go to college, much less, finish high school. My parents know who I am, the fact that I love to learn has only motivated them to push me harder.
Trinity Scott, Chicago, IL, undecided, wants to attend UNLV:
(Courtesy: Trinity Scott)
Growing up in a family of six, Scott shouldered a lot of responsibility as a caregiver to her younger siblings while her parents worked multiple jobs to support the family. Preparing after-school snacks while watching a lot of HGTV, Scott says she discovered two things she’s now passionate about, real estate and baking. “The Opportunity Scholarships helped me throughout my college application journey. The College Board gave me simple tasks to help with my college application while awarding me with scholarship raffle entries. The College Board Scholarships are a great opportunity that also keeps you on track for pursuing a higher education.”
Reflecting on the moment she found out about the $40,000, Scott said, “I was speechless. My mom made fun of me because I’m a talkative person, and for once I was speechless. I also happy because my hard work finally paid off. And the last thing I felt was pride because a lot of black youths don’t get the opportunity to reach where I’m at. So, you know I’m repping that Black Girl Magic!”
Angelique Hall – Beacon, NY, will attend SUNY Plattsburgh:
(Courtesy: Angelique Hall)
In her previous high school, Angelique was a member of the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, the National Honor Society, and the School Band. She had a difficult time when she had to change schools during her high school career, but she quickly bounced back and has excelled academically and socially. As her school counselor put it, “Angelique has grit.” She is a member of the National Honor Society, a Class Advocate, and maintains a rigorous academic workload and is in the top 10% of her class. Angelique enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and narratives. At a recent poetry slam, Angelique’s principal was moved by her poem about identity and acceptance. She hopes to pursue a career as an author and entrepreneur. Her leadership recognitions include being named Class of 2020 Advocate, Outstanding Cadet, Cadet Captain, NYSSMA, Tuskegee Airman Inc. AFJROTC Cadet Award, Flight Commander of Alpha Flight, Flight Sergeant of Alpha Flight, Plight Physical Training NCO of Alpha Flight.
Apply Today
More than 500,000 students from all 50 states have joined the College Board Opportunity Scholarships program since it launched in December 2018. In addition to the 25 $40,000 Complete Your Journey winners, nearly 4,000 students from 48 states, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, earned $3.6 million in smaller scholarships, ranging from $500 to $2,000.
Click here to learn more about the College Board’s scholarships.
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A Group of Philadelphia Doctors Are Giving Free COVID-19 Testing To Underserved Communities
Since the start of the COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, pandemic, hospitals have been overwhelmed by the rising number of new cases coming in. Healthcare professionals have been forced to work around the clock to provide medical treatment to the infected, and major cities have converted large venue spaces into treatment centers to accommodate more patients. One group of doctors in Philadelphia are taking matters into their own hands to provide free testing and treatment to underserved communities in the city.
Pediatric surgeon and North Philly native Ala Stanford runs a medical consulting firm and a private practice. She says she noticed more and more deaths were being recorded in the city and has become increasingly frustrated with the response. The surgeon worries about the city’s black population as the pandemic continues.
“In Philadelphia, African Americans represent 44% of the population, but at last check, 52% of the deaths,” Stanford said to WHYY PBS. “For me, that was unacceptable.”
Stanford formed the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium—an affiliation that includes a number of doctors and churches in Philadelphia’s black neighborhoods. As a part its initiative, the group took some medical supplies and went out into the community to start making house calls in West Philadelphia and eventually the rest of the city. The group has been able to test around 200 people per day.
“We are many of the forward-facing employees,” she said. “We’re driving the buses, we’re driving … the subways and the trains. We are the post office workers, we are in the grocery stores, we’re ringing people up at the pharmacies.”
The group has set up a GoFundMe account and has raised more than $2,200 of its $50,000 goal. Stanford said Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Einstein Medical Center, and the city health department have also expressed interest in partnering with the group but for right now, she plans to keep doing independent tests in the meantime.
“It takes time with systems and bureaucracy,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand watching it on the news every day and not doing anything.”
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Blocks DACA Students From Receiving Coronavirus Grant Aid
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos blocked students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from receiving emergency grant aid as part of the CARES Act Monday.
According to Forbes, the CARES Act allocated $14 billion to colleges and universities to address the unique impact the virus has had on college campuses. Half of the funds must be in the form of emergency grant aid directly to students to address living expenses such as housing, food, healthcare, and more.
Universities and colleges were waiting for DeVos to release guidance to detail how exactly schools could allocate the grant money, including who is eligible. In the guidance, released Monday, DeVos limited the students eligible for the grant aid to those who are only also eligible for federal student financial aid.
That means undocumented immigrants participating in the DACA program are not eligible to receive funds.
“The CARES Act makes clear that this taxpayer funded relief fund should be targeted to U.S. citizens, which is consistently echoed throughout this law,” an Education Department spokesperson said Monday.
The aid, however, is not considered normal student aid—something DeVos acknowledged by excluding it from the 90-10 rule, which limits the share of federal student aid dollars that make up for-profit colleges’ revenues. Additionally, DACA students are taxpayers themselves and the CARES Act does not prohibit DACA students from receiving the emergency aid.
The financial impact of coronavirus may affect students in the DACA program harder than others. Students in the DACA program, most of which are Hispanic, may be forced to get jobs to hold them over or to help their family.
According to a JPMorgan Chase Institute study, for every $1 lost in income, African American families cut spending by $0.46 and Hispanic families cut spending by $0.43. Additionally, many Hispanic families are already dealing with the reality of lower-paying jobs and a lower likelihood of working from home than white families.
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Thursday, April 23, 2020
Six from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2020
Six MIT faculty members are among more than 250 leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced Thursday.
One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, as well as studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.
Those elected from MIT this year are:
- Robert C. Armstrong, Chevron Professor in Chemical Engineering;
- Dave L. Donaldson, professor of economics;
- Catherine L. Drennan, professor of biology and chemistry;
- Ronitt Rubinfeld, professor of electrical engineering and computer science;
- Joshua B. Tenenbaum, professor of brain and cognitive sciences; and
- Craig Steven Wilder, Barton L. Weller Professor of History.
“The members of the class of 2020 have excelled in laboratories and lecture halls, they have amazed on concert stages and in surgical suites, and they have led in board rooms and courtrooms,” said academy President David W. Oxtoby. “With today’s election announcement, these new members are united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the academy’s work to advance the public good.”
Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading thinkers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Daniel Webster in the 19th century, and Toni Morrison and Albert Einstein in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
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Reporting tool aims to balance hospitals’ Covid-19 load
As cases of Covid-19 continue to climb in parts of the United States, the number of people seeking treatment is threatening to overwhelm many hospitals, forcing some facilities to ration their care and reserve ventilators, hospital beds, and other limited medical resources for the sickest patients.
Having a handle on local hospitals’ capacity and resource availability could help balance the load of Covid-19 patients requiring hospitalization across a region, for instance allowing an EMT to send a patient to a facility where they are more likely to be treated quickly. But many states lack real-time data on their current capacity to treat Covid-19 patients.
A group of researchers in MIT’s Computer Science and Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), working with the MIT spinoff Mobi Systems, are aiming to help level demand across the entire health care network by providing real-time updates of hospital resources, which they hope will help patients, EMTs, and physicians quickly decide which facility is best equipped to handle a new patient at any given time.
The team has developed a web app which is now publicly accessible at: https://Covid19hospitalstatus.com. The interface allows users such as patients, nurses, and doctors to report a hospital’s current status in a number of metrics, from the average wait time (something that a patient may get a sense for as they spend time in a waiting room), to the number of ventilators and ICU beds, which doctors and nurses may be able to approximate.
EMTS can use the app as a map, zooming in by state, county, or city to quickly gauge hospital capacity, and decide which nearby hospitals have available beds where they can send a patient requiring hospitalization. The app can also generate a list of hospitals, prioritized by availability, time of travel, and most recently updated data.
“We want to flatten the Covid curve by physical distancing over the course of months,” says MIT graduate Anna Jaffe ’07, CEO of Mobi Systems. “But there’s another curve to flatten, which is this real-time challenge of getting the right patient to the right hospital, in the right moment, to level the load on hospitals and health care workers.”
“Do something”
As the pandemic began to unfold around the world, Jaffe was intrigued by the results of a short hackathon that one Mobi member, Julius Pätzold, recently attended in Germany. The weekend challenge, sponsored by the German government, included a problem to match supply and demand, for instance in a hospital facing a surge in patient visits.
His team mapped the German hospital infrastructure, including the status of individual hospitals’ capacity, then simulated dispatching patients to hospitals according to a hospital’s capacity, its relative location to a patient, and a patient’s medical needs. The real-time maps developed over this short time suggested such tools would have a positive impact on a patient’s quality of care, specifically in decreasing death rates.
“That intersected with my feeling that I think everyone wants to do something around Covid-19 in response to the current crisis, and not just be cooped up in our respective homes,” says Jaffe, whose company, Mobi Systems, develops tools for large-scale network optimization problems surrounding mobility and hospitality.
Mobi originally grew out of CSAIL’s Model-based Embedded Robotic Systems group, led by MIT Professor Brian Williams, whose work involves developing autonomous planning tools to help individuals make complex, real-time decisions in the face of uncertainty and risk.
Jaffe reached out to Williams to help develop a web-based reporting tool for hospitals, to similarly help patients and medical professionals make critical, real-time decisions of where best to send a patient, based on resource availability.
“Our question was, how can the resources statewide or nationwide be used most effectively, in order to keep the most people healthy,” Williams says. “And for the individual, which hospital will meet their needs, and how do they get there. That’s the exercise we’re tackling here.”
Crowd power
The team’s app is heavily dependent on crowdsourced data, and the willingness of patients and medical professionals to report on various metrics, from a hospital’s current wait time to the approximate number of ICU beds and ventilators available.
“The reporting options right now are very specific,” Jaffe says. “But what we really want to know is, can your hospital accept a patient right now?”
A user can enter their role — patient, nurse, or physician — then report on, for instance, a hospital’s average wait time. With a sliding scale, they can rate their confidence in their report before submitting it.
But what if those users are reporting false or inaccurate data, whether intentionally or not?
Williams says in order to guard against such uncertainty, the team takes a probabilistic approach. For instance, the app assumes that one user’s reporting of a hospital’s status is one of low confidence, which is initially not weighed heavily in the overall estimation for that metric. They can then incorporate this one data point into all the other reports they’ve received for that metric. If most of those reports have also been rated with low confidence, but report the same result, that estimate, such as of wait time, is automatically weighed more heavily, and therefore rated at a higher confidence overall.
Additionally, he says if the app receives reports from more trusted sources — for instance, if hospitals make in-house, aggregated data available to the app — those sources would “swamp out” or take higher priority over low-confidence reports of the same metric.
The team is testing the app with just such a trustworthy dataset, from the state of Pennsylvania, which for the last several years has had a system in place for hospitals to report resource availability, that is updated at least twice a day. The team has used data from the last week to track Covid-19 visits across the state’s hospital system.
“In this data, you can see that not all hospitals are overrun — there are clear differences in availability,” says MIT graduate Peng Yu ’SM 13, ’PhD 17, chief technology officer at Mobi, highlighting the potential for distributing patients across a region’s hospitals, to balance resources across a hospital network.
However, most states lack such aggregated, updated information. In most other states, for instance, EMTs either have a handful of default facilities where they typically send patients, or they have to call around to surrounding hospitals to check availability.
“It’s really about word of mouth — who do you know, and who do you call up,” says Williams, whose nephew is an EMT who has worked in regions with varying decision-making practices. “We’re trying to aggregate that information, to make these recommendations much faster.
The team is now reaching out to thousands of medical professionals to test-drive the reporting tool, in hopes of boosting the crowdsourcing component for the app, which is now available on any internet-enabled device. To address the pandemic, the team believes that data need to be made available at a faster rate than the virus’ spread. Their hope is that states will follow in Pennsylvania’s footsteps and, for instance, mandate that hospitals report resource data, and provide reporting tools such as the new app to doctors and EMTs.
“This project is very much for the people, by the people, and will be kept open and free,” Williams says.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like this is a flash pandemic,” Jaffe says. “Even in a recovery period, hospitals will have to resume normal care, concurrently with treating Covid-19 over time. Our app may help load balance in that way as well, so hospitals can more effectively predict how many floors they need to quarantine for Covid-19, so that the rest of the hospital can go back to things like having families around a mother giving birth. We aim to really understand how to bring things back to a more normal operational status, while still handling the crisis.
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Rep. Maxine Waters says her sister is dying of coronavirus
In the midst of supporting legislation to help Americans who have been financially devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, California Rep. Maxine Waters announced her sister was dying from the virus.
READ MORE: Stacey Abrams says she’d be concerned if Biden’s VP pick is not a woman of color
“I not only rise in support of this legislation,” Waters said in her comments on the House floor. “I also would like to rise in support of what we’re doing for the health care enhancement act in this bill. And I’m going to take a moment to dedicate this legislation to my dear sister who is dying in a hospital in St. Louis, Mo., right now infected by the coronavirus.”
Rep. Maxine Waters: “I am going to take a moment to dedicate this legislation to my dear sister who is dying in a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, right now infected by the Coronavirus.” pic.twitter.com/sX58UK1A3L
— The Hill (@thehill) April 23, 2020
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, supported the bill, and her colleague, after learning of her sister’s diagnosis.
“It is my honor to sign it. but I do so very sadly and prayerfully. Maxine learned today that her sister has been diagnosed with the virus,” she said at a ceremony with other House members. “It could happen to anybody at anytime on the floor.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced yesterday that her older brother, Donald Herring, died of the coronavirus. He was 86.
The $484 billion relief package supplements the original Paycheck Protection Plan which ran out of money last week. That plan allows small businesses to borrow up to $10 million to play their employee, depending on the size of their business. If they retain the workers, the loans can be forgiven.
The Senate has already passed the bill and the House of Representatives passed it tonight. $60 billion of the new funding will be alloted to businesses without traditional banking relationships, including rural and minority-owned businesses reports NBC News.
Hospitals will receive $75 billion and $25 billion will be allocated to virus testing. The Labor Department reported earlier in the day that 26 million jobs have been lost in just five weeks. 4.4. million American claimed unemployment last week alone.
READ MORE: These three Southern states will start easing coronavirus lockdowns
Passing this measure would ease the economic fallout, but there’s already some concern that it won’t be enough. Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doubted any additional monies would be provided after this latest package.
Torsten Slok, the chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities, told NBC News that the economy being shut down is the central issue.
READ MORE: The IRS sent checks to dead people while the living wait
“The doors are still closed. There is still no smoke coming out of the chimneys in corporate America.” Given that, he added, it is “not surprising that you continue to see significant layoffs.”
President Trump said he would likely sign the bill tonight.
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African Nations Quick Moves Are Helping To Beat The Coronavirus
Four African nations that have imposed the most stringent restrictions on the continent are seeing early signs that rapid measures to contain the coronavirus are working.
According to Bloomberg News, other African nations are now following suit. Nigeria, the most populous nation on the continent, has imposed strong containment measures in the commercial hub of Lagos and in the capital, Abuja. Ethiopia, which ranks second in population, declared a state of emergency without a strict lockdown.
Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, commended the continent for taking the coronavirus seriously.
“It’s important to put in place mitigation measures from the very beginning,” Moeti told Bloomberg. “And in a number of countries, this is being done.”
South Africa responded to the virus quickly once it was discovered in the region—mobilizing healthcare workers to go out, some going door-to-door, taking down people’s travel histories, temperatures, and other risk factors, even setting up pop-up clinics. According to scientists, it bought the government valuable time to allow hospitals to prepare in the event positive cases skyrocket. A travel ban came into effect 13 days after the first coronavirus case was confirmed on March 5, and a lockdown was imposed on March 27.
Because of the quick action, the region now has less than 3,500 coronavirus cases. Almost 127,000 tests have been conducted out of a population of 59 million.
“The trajectory in South Africa is different from anywhere else,” said Salim Abdool Karim, chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Group on the outbreak, in a televised presentation. “We want to focus on the small flames so we never get to the raging flames.”
Ghana banned travelers from places with high rates of coronavirus in early March and as cases began to rise in the region, the government locked down its main cities and increased its testing. Ghana has tested more people than any other region other than South Africa. President Nana Akufo-Addo lifted the lockdown on Monday but said lifting the order “does not mean we are out of the pandemic,” adding stringent social distancing policies will remain in place.
Anthony Nsiah-Asare, Ghana’s presidential adviser on health, said the number of coronavirus cases will rise, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“When we start testing a lot of people, you will realize that the figure of positives will likely go up,” he said. “There is no cause for alarm. It means we’re doing our work very well.”
Uganda shut its borders and banned commercial flights starting March 23, less than 48 hours after the East African country identified its first coronavirus case. Two weeks later the government initiated a 14-day lockdown, which has been extended to May 5.
Despite all the good news, medical experts are warning fragile healthcare systems on the continent could create problems.
African Americans dealing with the coronavirus in the U.S. have not had the same good outcomes. Black Americans in the U.S. are being infected and dying at higher rates than other races in the U.S.
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