Medical students from the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury are working to keep their professional counterparts in hospitals fed during the coronavirus pandemic through a program called Meals from Med Students.
The group organizes donations of meals from local restaurants to area hospitals so that healthcare workers don’t have to go through a shift without food, according to Amanda DeFeo of Port Washington, a second-year student studying for her doctor of osteopathic medicine.
“This whole idea came out of the fact that so many medical students went into this profession because they want to help people,” DeFeo said.
As NYIT and other colleges closed in March while the students continued classes online, DeFeo and her classmates thought up ways to help hospital staffers on the pandemic’s front lines.
“Since so many of us are staying home to stop the spread of this virus, we wanted to find a way to help without violating social distancing,” DeFeo said.
The efforts started in earnest the week of April 6, she said, and only grew from there.
“So far it’s been successful for the amount of time we’ve been doing it,” DeFeo said. “We’ve raised a couple thousand dollars.”
Institutions like St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, Good Samaritan Hospital in Bay Shore and Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow have received donations from businesses in their areas, all facilitated by Meals from Med Students.
