1. Summarize and report out on the results of the SKS exercise.
   1. Start: Creating more clear agendas for our meetings; Reschedule meetings if more than half of the group cannot attend; Routinely update each other on progress throughout the week; Spend time together in a non-work context to strengthen relationships
   2. Keep: Communicating clearly and expressing our ideas; delegating tasks at the beginning of the week; Being respectful of and patient with one another
   3. Stop: Depending on PI for assignments and be more proactive; procrastinating; Having meetings without the whole team present; Begin taking actions with our plans
2. Develop a detailed Collaboration Plan for your team clearly articulating your Goals (Small g and Big G), Roles, Procedures, and Relationships.

Team Name: COVID-19 & Communities of Color                                   Date: 03/28/2021
Goals	Kayla : To help people who need it the most especially during a pandemic. And to ensure that if a pandemic happens again, it will not affect lower income communities as bad as it did last year. Helena: Ensure that communities of color are prepared, equitably treated, and less impacted in times of health crises. Elisha: To bring and maintain awareness to issues that affect communities of color/ create actionable solutions. Nandini: To address the healthcare inequities impacting communities of color in the Lehigh Valley during the pandemic with long-term policy solutions to ensure that they are better prepared/less impacted by health crises.  Fatima: To help the communities of color in the Lehigh Valley ensure they have all the resources they need to fight COVID  Erik: My goal is to bring light to the disproportionate impacts on communities of color, and help initiate actions by public officials and healthcare administrators to ensure this does not occur again, specifically in our community Project Goal:  Improve minority access to health services in the Lehigh Valley Improving the content and methods through which health-related information is spread in the Lehigh Valley (ie. COVID-19) Our goal is reachable because we have all the resources we need, and it will be easier to see our goal when we start collecting data. We recognize our constraints and have scaled our project plans accordingly.  Metrics of success: Once we get our foot in the door of meeting someone who has the power to share our data.  Research, numerical and nominal data to statistically support the needs that we are addressing. Policymakers finding credence in our policy memorandums  Creating relationships with professors, community organizations, and health care workers Our ability to maintain those relationships Feedback from the community to make sure that they understand our mission and we understand their needs.
Roles	As a team we are all responsible for each deliverable. We collect data individually then share the data and collaborate on how it affects our project.  Individual work: research, communication Subgroups: research, presentation Collaboration: project design and development, meetings, communication  We all depend on each other to succeed. We depend on Nandini, the project manager. We depend on Professor Brunstein for his expertise on the subject.  ·  Each person is responsible for collecting data, doing individual research, completing assignments in a timely manner, attending meetings, giving input, and communicating with other group members
Procedures	Decision Making – We have found consensus to be the most effective making process.  Effective Meetings – We discuss what needs to be accomplished each week as well as our upcoming goals.   Meeting roles: coordinator-Nandini; scribe-Fatima Communication – FTF: Our meetings take place every Sunday at 5PM via Zoom. The expectation is that everyone is present, however, there is understanding if a member communicates that they cannot attend.
Relationships	Diversity – We all come from different backgrounds which gives us an advantage when looking at different perspectives. Even though we come from different backgrounds, we all still work really well together as we all know how to communicate. We all share one common goal and that is to make Lehigh Valley a better place in the long run, so we are all passionate about finding data and working together.  Listening – We succeed in listening actively to each other and we create an equal and accepting work environment where everyone’s opinion is valued.  Team name – COVID-19 & Communities of Color

10 takeaways from Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of the Start”

1. You can make meaning (change the world) by increasing the quality of life, righting a wrong, or preventing the end of something good. Companies that are successful make meaning.
2. A company’s mantra has to be short, unique, and memorable.
3. To be revolutionary you have to think different and not be content with doing things 10-15% better. You have to reach further and do things 10x-15x better.
4. The concept of a solo entrepreneur is false. You need “soul mates” who are people to balance you off.
5. Keep your business model simple, specific, and ask women about it because men always want to “kill the competition” which is not realistic.
6. The priority for an entrepreneur is milestone, assumption, and task.
7. Marketing is about having the ability to provide a unique product or service and its value to a customer. You want both of these metrics to be high simultaneously.
8. You should have 10 slides in your presentation. You should be able to give it in 20 minutes. The smallest font you should use is 30 point font.
9. Don’t ask people to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself.
10. Don’t let “bozos” drive you down – there are bozos that you won’t listen to because they are not credible. The dangerous bozo is powerful, intelligent, and rich, and you may be tempted to listen to them, but don’t.

Does your work require IRB approvals…right now? At a later stage? 

Our work does not require IRB approvals right now because our research does not involve human subjects yet. We are gathering data and information from secondary sources. At a later stage, our work will require IRB approval, when we interview communities of color in the Lehigh Valley. Our questions would have to be approved by the IRB. 

If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy.

Our IRB strategy is to create a proposal that includes these 4 criteria which simultaneously preserves the nature of our study and protects the participants. The first criterion is informed consent. We will give information about our research to those we are interviewing and inform them of our purpose, to investigate the claim that communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in the Lehigh Valley. We must answer their questions and allow them to decide whether to participate. The next criterion is confidentiality. It is important to keep the data that we receive from the subjects confidential to avoid unintentional or unauthorized release of private information. The next criterion is risk-benefit ratio. As a team, we must ensure that there will be minimal risk in relation to the anticipated benefits. We will consider all of these criteria when creating our questionnaire as well as our IRB proposal. Our IRB proposal will include our hypothesis, study background, design and methodology of the interview, details about the subject population, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and recruitment. Our IRB strategy will incorporate putting materials in English and Spanish, since there is a large Hispanic population in the Lehigh Valley.  

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations.

Who are you?

• Intros of ourselves
• Have pictures of us in slide 

What are you doing?

• Brief background/nature of our project
• Pictures instead of words on the slides
  • Purpose: To assess the claim that communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in the Lehigh Valley and devise policy solutions to address major inequities
  • Spring 2021 goals:
    • Identify the main issues affecting POC’s in the Lehigh Valley during the pandemic (health/employment/housing) 
    • Identify community organizations/leaders to interview in the future
    • Obtain reports from LVHN & St. Luke’s to study patient demographics/COVID cases/vaccine distribution
    • Establish contacts within various small and large community healthcare providers 

Where will you be doing it?

• Lehigh valley, pictures of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton

Why are you doing it? (what problem are you solving/addressing?)

• Research on why this is important
• Statistics on the area and demographics 
• Pictures of maybe graphs or statistics of the research 
  • In general, people of color are getting vaccinated for COVID-19 at much lower rates across the U.S.
  • Distributing more vaccines to smaller healthcare providers may make people of color more likely to be willing to get the vaccine because patients tend to trust their primary care physician more
  • People of color are wearier of receiving the covid vaccine, which is also believed to have been developed rather quickly
  • Black, Latino, and Native Americans are 2x more likely to be infected, 3x more likely to be hospitalized, and 2x more likely to die from COVID-19 in comparison 
  • Communities of color have experienced an overwhelming amount of trauma throughout their history. Covid-19 the latest another phenomenon that is affecting their mental health
  • Incidents of violence against the Black community have underscored the pre-existing increased anxiety and depression within these in communities
  • AA households experienced greater job loss, more food and medicine insecurity, and higher indebtedness in the early months of COVID-19 compared to white or Latinx low-income households
  • Economic crises hit people of color harder and longer than others
  • Non-White Lehigh Valley residents are three times more likely to not graduate from high school compared to White residents — severely limiting their employment opportunity
  • Those living in crowded urban areas are likely also living near manufacturing and thus, are near harmful toxins and wastes, leaving them exposed to harmful physical and social environments and increased stressful events. 

How are you doing it?

• List of potential solutions that are actions associated with the solutions
  • Vaccine Distribution
    • Administering vaccines at cultural/community centers and churches accessible to low-income communities of color
    • Working with translators to address language barriers during vaccine registration
    • Dispel misconceptions about the vaccines by compiling all information in a manner that is accessible to low-income communities of color
    • Provide assistance to people who don’t have access to the internet to register for the vaccine
  • Working to address healthcare barriers
    • Focus on the insurance profiles of those with continued care and those without, and insurance requirements of diagnostic centers
    • Focus on telephone access, signage and interpreters, transportation to and from facilities, and proximity to POC neighborhoods
    • Develop assessments for the level of patient understanding, literacy level perform completion, and language concordance
    • Set up more testing and treatment for vulnerable communities

Credibility/validity – partners? funders? 

• People we want to connect with such as government officials and policymakers, healthcare personnel, educators, etc. 
• Research we have found from various sources 
• We do not seem to need much funding for this project right now, but we hopefully would work with potential partners listed above if funding is needed. 

What supporting evidence will you provide for each point?

• We have found research from journals and news articles, and databases. We also found local articles that pertain to the region we are conducting our project in. 
• In the future, we will have additional evidence once we solidify our relationships within the Lehigh Valley Health Network

How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

• We will provide participants with background information and research that we have gathered to demonstrate our knowledge within this topic
• Clearly state what our problem is and what the potential solution is
• We will keep contact with our participants throughout the time we are working with them to establish trust between each other. 
  • We can create a relationship with them outside of the research
• When we present our work and research to our participants or others, we will speak confidently and professionally.
  • We will include a Works Cited section of our presentations to validate our research and credibility
• We will be prepared to answer questions and will be open to feedback

1. List ten things that make you feel human.

1. Breathing fresh air and feeling the sun on a summer day 
2. Long, sincere conversations about life where you make connections with people
3. Moments when I question my existence
4. Listening to music while driving 
5. The feeling of happiness and accomplishment after a workout
6. Silence. I really appreciate silence because I am sensitive to noise. 
7. Traveling to new places
8. Laughing
9. Enjoying an awesome meal
10. Being in love

2. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF / LVSIF. Specifically discuss:

I believe that the first step to solving any problem is awareness. People will not care about the world’s issues if they do not know that they exist. People especially will not invest their time or money in solving a problem if they do not understand it well. Being in an age of globalism, the humans alive today know about the problem’s of other people more than ever. One could make a case that we actually know too much about other people’s lives — obsessed with understanding the private lives and pasts of celebrities and politicians. But why is it just the rich and famous that we want to know everything about? It is probably because we envy their lives because they appear to be luxurious and care-free. However, I believe that we can apply that same sense of inquiry to those suffering in our world. I engage because there are so many issues that people do not know are occurring right now, across the globe and in their neighborhoods. As it pertains to my work with LVSIF, communities of color in the Lehigh Valley have been impacted more severely by the covid-19 pandemic, struggling with poverty, illness, and inequality. If I can play a part in informing legislature, health care providers, and the Lehigh Valley about the challenges of communities of color, I will make an impact on the lives of people in my community. More generally, if we as humans took time to explore this conflict-ridden world and learn about the people who lack in any way, I think there would be a lot more sustainable entrepreneurs out there. 

I must engage with sincere intentions to improve the lives of others. More importantly, I must make those intentions clear and know that the community I am engaging with may not welcome my help at first. I will learn about the community using indigenous knowledge because it holds cultural traditions that are important to the people. I must engage sustainably so that I am not destroying the ecosystem, environment, or homes of those I am engaging with. My goal must not be to disturb, but to work together as equals with the goal of improving the human condition. I can not engage alone. I need reliable partners who share my values of awareness, respect, and empathy for the world. As more people engage and understand my work with LVSIF, I hope that they will become invested into the project too.  Awareness is not the only message I want to stress in my philosophy, because you can tell a million people what you are passionate about, but if you do not have a good idea or plan to fix it, you will lose people’s attention very fast. Therefore, I must engage with a well-designed model and concept of operations. I must be self-determined and willing to collaborate with others. 

I must engage with the communities of color in the Lehigh Valley because they are experiencing the greatest effects from the pandemic biologically, economically, and socially. The poverty rate in Allentown is 27.3% and Hispanics make up the majority of that number. I am learning through my research that communities of color feel the effects of economic recession longer and harder than white people. While our lives at Lehigh may be looking up, people are still lacking access to healthcare and the vaccine. People are still feeling the effects of losing their jobs and losing their family members. Children who can not go to school take on more responsibilities at home because their parents are essential workers. It is essential to talk to the community so I can gain insight into their reality. I also must engage with community organizations in the Lehigh Valley such as Hispanic Center of the Lehigh Valley and St. Luke’s University Health Network because they know the problems facing communities of color. Establishing valuable partnerships increase the credibility of our project and will give us a bigger platform to increase awareness and exhibit our work. 

The challenges I should care about are the challenges faced by the Lehigh Valley and the challenges that my team and I face while working on the project. We may face challenges in finding people to interview, establishing good connections with community partners, and realizing our end goal. We may find a lot of information and data about communities of color in the Lehigh Valley, but then what? A challenge may be sticking to our goals when we are unmotivated or do not think we are making progress. Opportunities I should care about are any opportunities to interact with the community, which are the people we are engaging with. These opportunities include interviews, initiatives to increase vaccine rollout, and presenting policy memos to local government. Approaches I should care about are ways that community organizations are attempting to address the impact of covid-19 on communities of color. It would be helpful to analyze these and see what ideas I can incorporate or leave out from our project. 

My epitaph might read:  “Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” –  Jack London

1.Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

• My fluency in Spanish and my Colombian heritage can allow me to effectively communicate with the Latino community and empathize with their cultural barriers. 
• My background in analyzing and processing data in the classroom setting could help in the field and will help corroborate the research goals. 
• Knowledge of the Lehigh Valley area having lived here can provide us with background information that can help us understand the population and the extent of what we are trying to do. 
• Background knowledge about the Lehigh Valley and interest and slight expertise in public health can allow me to maneuver my way around the area and the topics we will be addressing in this project. 
• Interest in the broad applications of social science 
• Experience living within communities similar to those we are trying to help
• Background in organizing events/ interacting directly with those in communities 
• Helena – A design process that is both uniquely mine and effective would incorporate my experience drafting/writing policy memos. Due to my experience, I believe that policy memos are a great form of analysis and recommendation. I believe my experience would make designing one easier and more effective. Being fluent in Spanish will allow me to communicate with the Hispanic population in the Lehigh Valley, which is a community of color. I believe that this skill would make our interviews more effective and meaningful for me. My experience with an interest in community service is an important aspect of my life. Serving the community through the design process would make it unique to my interests. I believe that this experience and interest would help me approach the community with respect and maintain relationships and partnerships. 

Our unique design process would build off of all of the aforementioned skills and experiences, centered primarily around making strong connections with community members and healthcare workers in the Lehigh Valley to gain insight into the major issues that communities of color are facing during the pandemic. We believe it is important that throughout this project, we establish clear and consistent communication with the communities that we would like to work with in order to design the appropriate policy solutions. This is also crucial to better understand the different cultural norms that we must work with.

2.Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them

1. Lehigh Valley Residents
   1. Knowledge of the area
   2. Personal experience with COVID-19 
   3. Have opinions on how the local government and Lehigh Valley health networks have handled COVID-19
   4. Low-income people of color (ie. African American, Hispanic, etc.)
   5. Essential workers/work in industries most impacted by COVID-19
2. Lehigh Valley Health Care Personnel
   1. Experienced the hectic environment of the pandemic 
   2. Knowledge of medicine and healthcare system to contribute to our project
   3. Can tell us how they feel different races were impacted by the virus
   4. Talk about what the national government and the local government did to help 
   5. Give data on COVID cases and vaccinations specifically within the Lehigh Valley
3. Lehigh valley political figures
   1. May be addressing the same issues we are looking at/ interested in addressing healthcare disparities in the Lehigh Valley through their position
   2. Have experience with policymaking to assist us in designing appropriate policy solutions for our project.
   3. Have greater authority/influence within the area
   4. Have connections. Can connect us to the people we need for certain topics we are looking at/to obtain certain types of information
   5. Have a platform. Can help us spread our message with their platform

3. Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.

1. Research, numerical and nominal data to statistically support the needs that we are addressing.
2. Policymakers finding credence in our policy memorandums 
3. Talk to professors and health care workers and use their input/knowledge about the issues that we are trying to address in our project concept/design process.
4. Feedback from the community to make sure that they understand our mission and we understand their needs.

4. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.

• My friend is teaching me Shona, his native language. Shona is a very beautiful Bantu language that is spoken in Zimbabwe. It is difficult to learn, but I find learning languages fascinating and fun.
• My friend, who lives in Russia, informed me about the Russian education system, which I did not know anything about. I was surprised to hear that Russia has a literacy rate of 98%, which is higher than most Western European countries. Classes last about 40 minutes with 15 minute break in between and most of higher education tuition is paid for by the government.
• My friend explained to me the concept of thermodynamics, which is the physics of heat and energy transfer. Thermodynamics is how air conditioning and central heating was created. I don’t study physics or engineering, so it was very interesting to learn how physics is useful or seen in my everyday life.