February marks Black Historical past Month, a time to pay tribute to these Black and Afro-Latinx who broke boundaries and proceed to make historical past.
Lengthy Island crucial care nurse Sandra Lindsay turned a nationwide identify when she obtained the primary official dose of the COVID-19 vaccine within the U.S. in December 2020. Three years later, she returned to her homeland in Jamaica to proceed her mission work.
For the reason that first jab, Lindsay has been engaged in her new management position as Vice President of Public Well being Advocacy at Northwell Well being, monitoring the unfold of coronavirus and making certain high-risk localities are getting the right healthcare, together with these overseas.
In partnership with medical provide nonprofit MedShare, Northwell donated over $800,000 price of medical tools to Jamaica in 2021, which Lindsay facilitated within the handover. This January, Lindsay traveled to Kingston to be hands-on with surgical procedures.
“Jamaica also reached out needing help for a backlog of surgeries related to COVID. People couldn’t get their care and schedule surgeries because of the pandemic,” Lindsay informed NBC New York, who assisted on upwards of a dozen gynecologic circumstances postponed for 2 years.
In addition to working on the College Hospital of the West Indies, Lindsay contributed to academic occasions and group screenings in rural surrounding areas. She even donated an important piece of apparatus courtesy of Northwell to the Noel Holmes Hospital within the western a part of the island.
Lindsay was honored to give again to her place of birth and appears again fondly at her time there, particularly along with her grandmother who served as an enormous inspiration. Lindsay moved to New York in 1986 on the age of 18 along with her mom and siblings, by no means dropping sight of her dream of turning into a nurse.
“It wasn’t easy. Culture shock, coming from Jamaica to the Bronx, apartment-style buildings. In winter, coming from a tropical country in the cold, I had to work to send myself to school,” Lindsay stated.
On the time, she labored odds-and-end jobs at supermarkets and comfort shops for minimal wage, which was lower than $4.00. Lindsay obtained her nursing diploma on the Borough of Manhattan Neighborhood School as a single mother and a nursing attendant.
This nurse has risen up the ranks since then, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden final yr for her work serving on the entrance strains of the pandemic.
“At that moment, I felt very proud and grateful. I also thought about what this would and will mean for groups that I identify with. What this will mean for women, Black women, immigrants, Jamaicans, West Indians, healthcare workers, nurses,” Lindsay recalled, stating that the dignity is shared with all teams named.