Alumni on the Frontlines
If you are helping out on the Front Lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic in any way, we want to hear your story. Whether you're volunteering your time, working with Covid patients, raising money for anyone who has been affected or towards research organizations, or even working on the Front Lines here in the US or in Israel, we want to know.
Below, you will find some Denver Jewish Day School alum making a big impact in our world as continue to battle COVID-19.
THANK YOU to all of our alum who have helped in any way!
Avi Kaye
Class of 2017
Avi is currently a DispatchHealth Medical Technician. DispatchHealth is a mobile urgent care providing medical assistance in people’s own residences. Our goal is to help treat individuals outside the emergency room or urgent care when possible to reduce chances of infection.
"There are many people who are understandably apprehensive about leaving their home for medical care - especially the elderly and immunosuppressed - which makes our work all the more important. We take universal personal protective equipment precautions for every patient wearing a mask and gloves before entering. If a patient has any respiratory or “flu-like” symptoms, we immediately upgrade our protection to keep all of our patients, our co-workers and ourselves safe."
Avi is currently a Junior at Stanford taking a leave of absence Spring Quarter to work as an EMT for DispatchHealth.
Yoni Siegel-Richman
Class of 2007
Yoni is currently an Emergency Medicine Resident Physician at the Hennepin county Medical Center.
"In addition to my past month working in the ICU with lots of critically ill patients COVID patients, the recent pandemic has affected our work in a multitude of ways. On a daily basis, we see new guidelines and recommendations being rolled out by our hospital in efforts to keep patients and staff safer. I think one of the greatest challenges has been the uncertainty of how to help patients. We often preach what is called “evidence-based medicine”; practicing medicine that has been proven to be effective by highly vetted research and not just treating conditions based on personal experience/anecdote. In this sense, we don’t know what is best for these patients and this has made our jobs as ER physicians extremely difficult. We want nothing more than to help our patients, and we find ourselves in a rare situation where we are seeing an incredibly high volume of a disease process that we just don’t know how to treat."
Yoni is working as an ER-resident physician. At HCMC, they treat people from a myriad of backgrounds and with all different spectrums of illness. In addition to Yoni's time spent working in the ER helping patients, he also spends time working with other specialist services and he recently completed a very busy month in the ICU treating patients with COVID and other critical Illnesses.
Shane Morris
Class of 2008
Shane is currently a Radiology Resident at the Virginia Mason Medical Center.
"I took a lot of overnight call over the last several months. Besides diagnosing COVID-19 in numerous patients, one of the most striking things I have noticed is that a number of patients presented with complex issues, as their usual health care was delayed (surgery canceled, follow-up appointments pushed off, etc...)."
Shane is a radiologist in-training at a tertiary care center. He spends his days interpreting MRI’s, CT’s, ultrasounds, and x-rays, as well as performing image-guided procedures.
Shoshana Leftin Dobkin
Class of 2008
Shoshana is currently the Senior Resident of Pediatrics at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.
"It is impossible to summarize the impact of the scale of death and devastation witnessed by healthcare workers in New York during the peak of the pandemic. Every available medical provider and hospital bed was redeployed for care of critically ill adult COVID patients, including our pediatric residents, nurses and hospital units. I was redeployed to another children’s hospital where all pediatric patients in NYC were being consolidated and cared for children
with COVID-19 and it’s sequelae."
Shoshana is a pediatrician in the final year of residency responsible for the medical care of infants and children hospitalized in acute and critical care units.
Devra Barter
Class of 2004
Devra is currently an Emerging Infections Epidemiologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
"Instead of focusing on other emerging diseases, I now spend my days tracking, controlling, and trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Colorado. Specifically, I am helping healthcare facilities and other institutional or communal settings control COVID-19 outbreaks by providing infection control recommendations and collecting data on patients or residents with COVID-19 in these settings."
As an epidemiologist, Devra spends her days tracking diseases across the state of Colorado. This includes detecting, controlling and preventing the spread of communicable disease outbreaks, collecting data on patients diagnosed with certain infections, and analyzing trends in disease distribution.
Gillian Brown
Class of 2011
Gillian is currently a Physical Therapist at UChealth.
Gillian was a Physical Therapist in hospital and outpatient settings, and she is about to redeploy to CU Anschutz campus to help with the influx of COVID patients.
Josh Volin
Denver JDS Alum
Josh is currently a third year Medical student attending the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.
"When the COVID-19 pandemic struck I was in the middle of studying for the STEP1 board exam for medical students. It was cancelled soon thereafter which allowed me to travel home. When I got home I saw how everything was at a standstill and how scared people were. There were so many unknowns. I realized that to get things back to normal we needed testing in our community and that is why I chose to help start up a testing site in Thornton. Now, we have tested thousands of people and are providing a valuable service that is easy for everyone to get access to. Visit COCOVIDdriveup.com if you would like to learn more about what our drive up testing site does and maybe even go get yourself tested. Stay safe!"
"Denver JDS was a wonderful part of my childhood and instilled in me a lot of the values that have stuck with me to this day. Specifically, Tikkun Olam and leaving the world in a better place than where I found it. During such uncertain times, the ideology of Tikkun Olam has kept me on course working towards that goal."
Meirav Siegel-Richman
Class of 2004
Meirav is currently a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at New York City Health + Hospitals/Jacobi.
"In the beginning, the ER was busy with lots of COVID patients and we were still learning about the illness. It was hard to not know what to expect and we’ve had to remain calm and steady throughout the crisis. I’ve also had to learn to work with adults to help out and lend a hand to other areas of the hospital in need. Unfortunately, I got COVID-19 myself but was able to jump right back once I recovered. I really enjoy working in the emergency department and helping kids and their families, even during these times and feel blessed that I’ve been able to continue going to work daily."
Meirav works in the pediatric emergency department treating children and young adults ages 0-21 with a whole variety of ailments- from sore throats to broken bones, car accidents and beyond.
Aaron Greenstein
Class of 2007
Aaron is currently a Psychiatry Resident at Harvard Medical School / Boston VA.
"COVID has completely changed how I work! Before all of this happened, I was seeing patients in many different hospitals and clinical settings. I now mostly work from home, seeing my clinic patients via tele health. Many of my clinic patients are struggling with the change. At the same time, most of my clinic patients are doing exceptionally well and finding ways to make meaning out of this all. It is inspiring to see how resilient people are, especially those who have gone through great hardship at times. My hospital work is more stressful now with ever-changing rules and recommendations, PPE requirements, unusual behavioral changes seen in COVID patients. It’s been an transformative experience to say the least."