TCNJ

33 WINTER 2022 San Francisco had the lowest death rates and new case rates, and highest testing rates compared to any other densely populated city in the U.S.," says Boyo. By the fall of 2020, Boyo brought his experience battling COVID with him to another new position as senior vice president for hospital operations at John Muir Health. Now well into the pandemic, the city was about to enter its third surge of cases as the holidays crept close. Boyo was tasked with managing all operations of a hospital full of exhausted healthcare workers who had faced both the pandemic and the social unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd. In addition, Boyo was asked to lead the COVID-19 Command Center at JMH, which meant organizing vaccinations for his workers (some of the first in the U.S. to receive them) and for local commu- nities — especially ensuring that the hardest-hit populations had equal access to testing and vaccines. It was a complicated operation, but Boyo found that not all innovations through crisis have to be complicated. One in particular was beautiful in its simplicity: a space within JMH for healthcare workers to cry if they needed to, to process lost patients and family members and people like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. "As a leader, I asked myself: how do I stop the bleeding of my team who are feeling emotionally and physically drained?" says Boyo. "The answer was to acknowledge their pain and create a space to grieve." Though Boyo's work is always supported by data, he refuses to lose the human element behind those numbers in both the populations he serves and in the staff that supports him in the work. "I feel like I discov- ered my life's meaning when I discovered public health," says Boyo. "Because, for me, making an impact on a population became sacred. Every policy I've ever implemented or deployed, every clinic or hospital I've ever run, I've tried to improve access and support the population being served," he says. "These are people with lives and jobs and families. They have never been numbers to me." ■ Maureen Harmon is a partner at Dog Ear Consultants, a publishing redesign company. " How do I stop the bleeding of my team who are feeling emotionally and physically drained?"

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