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Tar Heels join the fight

Students respond to the
COVID-19 pandemic

Over the past several months, Tar Heels have stepped up to address the challenges our communities face because of the novel coronavirus. Students quickly utilized their skills to support health care workers, researchers and community members impacted by COVID-19.

Medical students tackled their course work and launched PPE production lines in Carolina’s makerspaces or fired up their own 3-D printers to create brackets to secure health care workers’ masks. Other students launched community support programs to alleviate the loneliness that came with social distancing and created donation chains to get equipment to UNC Hospitals.

People build face shields.

Everybody is trying to do as much as they can to help out. A lot of people have basically taken on a brand-new full-time job in addition to the full-time job of being a med student. If we can’t be working with patients and other clinicians in the hospital and the clinic, we wanted to try to put 100% of that energy in something really useful.

Alex Gregor, UNC School of Medicine student

A man holds a medical face shield.

Meet a
Tar Heel

Click on a story to learn how a current Carolina student is making a difference during the pandemic.

  • Diana Lee

    When her classes moved online, pharmacy student Diana Lee organized a phone-a-friend program to connect Tar Heels with some of the residents most impacted by social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders: senior citizens.

    Diana Lee
  • #GDTBATH:Becky Hoover text on a photo with a woman and two children running.

    To aid Carolina’s health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Becky Hoover, a first-year doctoral student in the UNC School of Nursing, is working overtime night shifts as a bedside oncology nurse at UNC Hospitals.

    Becky Hoover
  • Alec Fields

    When the COVID-19 pandemic began, second-year physician assistant studies student Alec Fields began to use his 3D printer to create much-needed brackets for personal protective equipment for health care providers in eastern North Carolina.

    Alec Fields

Supporting frontline workers