Friends,
On a February day, we can cut branches from a forsythia bush, bring them indoors to a water vase, and watch them blossom into a spray of yellow and the promise of a new season.
This month offers another reason for hope: the promise of a shot in the arm. It would be, in fact, the shot heard around the whole world if citizens in each and every nation receive equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
This year brings the promise of returning to work and our colleagues, to places of worship where we can pass the peace with a handshake, to school, to sweaty gyms, to weddings, funerals, concert venues, and shoulder-to-shoulder pubs and coffee houses. We will (and should) re-emerge with caution. But we will begin to enjoy a gradual unclenching of COVID worries and to live our lives more freely again.
For CHP, this gradual re-opening of our community gives us hope that patients who may have avoided medical care this past year will come back to our medical offices. We have hope that we can now see your faces to have more meaningful conversations. We have high hopes of meeting in person with our many community friends, donors and partners, to honor the work we all do to improve the lives of our neighbors.
Finally, from the COVID-19 crisis, I hope that we at CHP embrace invaluable lessons from the last year: lessons of perseverance, problem-solving, caring for patients in new ways, and, foremost, the lesson of deep generosity that has helped CHP reach thousands of families and individuals who
have been most harshly impacted by COVID.
The costs of COVID—lives, severe illness, isolation, job and income loss, stress, and mental health strains—have been steep.
But COVID has shown us all what we are capable of in a time of acute crisis. We have all done the very best we can. CHP will continue to care for the people of Berkshire County, with
generosity and hope for our shared recovery.
Please join us in our next steps.
Sincerely,
Lia Spiliotes, CEO