The momentum of the #thankyouhealthcareheroes movement — appreciation shown to healthcare professionals during the COVID19 pandemic — has manifested itself in window messages on skyscrapers, emergency vehicle parades with full lights and sirens and clapping and/or banging cazuelas on Brickell balconies, in Tik Tok and Instagram video 
homages and Facebook support pages.
Doctors, nurses and healthcare workers at Jackson Memorial Hospital don’t want the love fest to end.
An important conversation has opened up about how essential healthcare workers are in society and how they need to be equipped and paid properly and how the public at large can help them by staying safe in a number of ways. And that conversation shouldn’t stop just because the numbers of COVID19 hospitalizations drop and we inch toward the “new normal.”
So, the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 5,600 doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers at Jackson’s hospitals and community care centers, are reaching out to the Miami-Dade residents through social media and a new website to share their stories and other important information as the world prepares for a second and, perhaps, even a third wave.
Because this isn’t just going to go away.
Read related: Furloughs proposed, then scrapped at Jackson in the midst of COVID19
It seemed like a natural progression after the digital connection made with the public during the stay-at-home orders, 
said Martha Baker, registered nurse and president of the SEIU Local 1991.
“We want to stay in touch,” she told Ladra Monday, when the website went live. The web videos will soon be shared on social media, Baker said.
“We’re recognizing the fact that people want to thank healthcare heroes and we are thanking them for appreciating us. We want to build on that relationship with the public by reaching back out to them and working together during a challenging time in our history,” she said, adding that she was also talking about the recent protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“There are so many things going on we need more ways to stand united instead of divided,” Baker said.
The 16 videos already uploaded on the site include photo collages of Jackson COVID nurses, doctors and healthcare 
workers in their personal protective equipment throughout the crisis. It also includes thank you videos from local athlete “heroes” like Bret Graves and Harold Ramirez from the Miami Marlins and Preston Williams and Chandler Cox from the Miami Dolphins.
It will also provide a platform for the hospital to share stories about how the Jackson staff has pulled together to cover the COVID crisis and how the nurses and doctors decontaminate at home. The SEIU also wants to help promote businesses that support frontline workers with perks and discounts.
One back scratches the other.
Baker encourages people to visit the website and submit videos or information they want to share. Visitors can also subscribe to a newsletter the union will also use to share important information.
Read related: Epidemiologist explains why social distancing is the #1 weapon against COVID19
The site also gives the organization a place to memorialize those Jackson Health System has lost to COVID19.
The first was Araceili Buendia Ilagan, an intensive care nurse who worked for 33 years at Jackson and died in three days in March. In April, the hospital lost two more staff members: Doctor Luis Caldera-Nieves, an obstetrician and 
gynecologist at Jackson South Community Hospital, and Devin Dale Francis, an emergency department radiology technician.
Ladra suggests another way we can honor their memory and really #helpourhealthcareheroes — and that’s by voting in November (and even August). The SEIU will no doubt make candidate endorsements this year, as they do for most elections, and we can help nurses and doctors by voting for legislators and electeds who support healthcare policies that protect us all. Stay tuned because Ladra will let you know who they are.
That’s worth more than a Tik Tok dance video.
Jackson Miami doctors, nurses want post COVID19 community conversation added by Ladra on
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