URI Student Collects Over 5,000 Masks for Frontline Workers

Will take any mask donation from those willing to help frontline workers.

KINGSTON, R.I (WLNE) – A URI Nursing student collected more than 5,000 medical-grade masks to help during the COVID-19 crisis.

Meredith Arden, a student in the College’s Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program, collected the masks from companies around Rhode Island and Massachusetts and is delivering them to front-line medical workers.

Arden recognized early on in the outbreak that protective equipment could be in short supply for workers like her and her fellow nurses.

In early March, as the virus’ effect on the United States was becoming widespread, Arden gave a presentation on infection control to employees at SSTARbirth Addiction Treatment in Cranston.

The facility told her they were having difficulty finding medical-grade masks, so she promised to help.

“That night I went to dinner and I was talking about how I could get a hold of some masks for them,” Arden said. “A gentleman happened to overhear me saying I needed them, and he came up to me and said he could get them for me. He knows someone who owns a shipyard who can help.”

Arden drove to the shipyard and met with the owner just a few days later.

He handed her a case of N-95 masks that were more than enough to supply SSTAR.

After Arden assured him they would go directly to frontline workers, the owner began calling colleagues in other construction companies, who agreed to also donate masks.

Arden then spent the next couple weeks driving around Rhode Island and Massachusetts, traveling as far as Springfield and Chelmsford, filling her car with boxes of masks.

The direct distribution to frontline workers was key in securing the masks, she said.

“In some facilities, supplies like masks are distributed around and they don’t always get to the people actually working with patients,” Arden said. “They weren’t going to donate them unless they got to the people who really need them. I contacted individual nurse managers and made sure they went right to the people who needed them. Some of the companies had been contacted to donate, but they gave them to me because I went to talk to them and assured them where the masks would end up.”

Arden continues to collect N-95 asks and say she is willing to take donations from anyone willing to donate to frontline workers.

Anyone interested in donating can contact Arden at marden@my.uri.edu.

©WLNE-TV/ABC6 2020