Feature Story
Health Center Today, November 2, 2009
Auxiliary Carrying Out Good Deeds with Tongue Depressors
By Chris DeFrancesco
Mary Ntiri and her son, William, in the neonatal intensive care unit August 2008, two months after he was born 15 weeks premature. The Family Place at the Homewood Suites in Farmington was the New York City resident’s home during her newborn’s stay in the NICU. This UConn Health Center Auxiliary program has accommodated more than 60 families since its inception in July of 2008.
The two programs the UConn Health Center Auxiliary introduced last year to help babies and their families continue to thrive.
Now, to help support "WHALE" and "The Family Place," the Auxiliary is part of a new undertaking – one that involves a lot of tongue depressors and a little creativity.
The Auxiliary has joined the American Mural Project, an effort to create a giant mural that serves as an artistic tribute to the American worker. It will be known as the "Wall of America" and will take up permanent residence in a former factory building in Winsted.
A scale model of what will become the world’s largest indoor collaborative artwork, and some of the mural’s finished pieces, will be on exhibit at the Hartford Public Library October 28 through December 16.
One component of the mural will be sculpture made of individually painted tongue depressors, which will accompany the portion of the mural depicting celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz performing surgery.
School children in the Northeast have been hand-decorating tongue depressors, and now the Auxiliary is offering blank ones for this purpose. Anyone who donates a dollar will get a new tongue depressor to paint. The Auxiliary will collect the decorated sticks and turn them over to the American Mural Project, along with a share of the proceeds.
A newborn naps as her parents prepare to bring her home from the UConn Health Center, including affixing a WHALE sticker to her car seat. The UConn Health Center Auxiliary brought this child safety seat identification program to Connecticut in the spring of 2008, and has provided 2,000 WHALE kits to parents in 80 cities and towns.
"Our goal is to contribute 2,000 tongue depressors over the next year," says Irene Engel, Auxiliary facilitator.
Through its first year, The Family Place was home to five-dozen families from within and beyond Connecticut. The Family Place is a suite at the Homewood Suites in Farmington, a half-mile from the Health Center, that the Auxiliary has reserved exclusively for parents of children in the Health Center’s neonatal intensive care unit. Among the first to stay in the suite were Joe and Toya Nash, of Prairieville, La., and Mary Ntiri, of New York City. Brandy Crawford, of Hampton, Connecticut, sent a handcrafted thank-you card to the Auxiliary after her stay.
WHALE, which stands for “We Have a Little Emergency,” has reached more than 80 Connecticut towns since its introduction in the state in the spring of 2008. The Auxiliary provides kits that include stickers for car windows and labels for car seats intended to provide emergency responders with important information about the car seat occupant in the event of an accident. The kits are available to parents as they leave the Health Center with their newborns.
When finished, the American Mural Project’s “Wall of America” will be the world’s largest indoor collaborative artwork. The UConn Health Center Auxiliary is involved in the creation of a sculpture made of individually hand-decorated tongue depressors, which will be one of the murals three-dimensional elements.