Auchincloss Tours COVID-19 Community Vaccination Center at Tripadvisor's Global Headquarters
Auchincloss Tours COVID-19 Community Vaccination Center at Tripadvisor's Global Headquarters
Needham, MA - Today, Congressman Jake Auchincloss; Errol Norwitz, MD, President, Newton-Wellesley Hospital; Ellen Moloney, Chief Operating Officer, Newton-Wellesley Hospital; Jonathan Snider, MD, Associate Chair of Family Medicine Newton-Wellesley Hospital; Seth Kalvert, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, Tripadvisor Inc.; State Senator Becca Rausch; State Senator Mike Rush; State Representative Denise Garlick; and Greg Reibman of the Newton Needham Regional Chamber of Commerce toured the community vaccination center at Tripadvisor's Global Headquarters.
In February, it was announced that Tripadvisor®, the world's largest travel platform, in partnership with Newton-Wellesley Hospital, would use its temporarily unoccupied global corporate headquarters in Needham, MA. as a community vaccination center for eligible Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Mass General Brigham patients.
“This was an inspirational tour for me, the opportunity to see the best of Massachusetts business and the best of the Massachusetts hospital system come together to help people,” said Auchincloss. “We are in a race between vaccinations and variants and enterprises like this help ensure that we win that race. TripAdvisor is one of the great success stories of Massachusetts enterprise and during this past year, this crisis, we learned that TripAdvisor is not just a great exemplar of business, but also of corporate citizenship. This kind of partnership between Mass General Brigham and Newton-Wellesley Hospital, two of the jewels in the crown of the Massachusetts health care system, and TripAdvisor is really a model for how we need to be leveraging public-private partnerships throughout the country to win this race between vaccinations and variants. I know we are all looking forward to a time when TripAdvisor can stop doing vaccinations and start advising on trips again. But until then, I really want to commend one of the great corporate citizens of Massachusetts for the work they’re doing here.”
Auchincloss and others received a tour of the vaccination site and chatted with partners about vaccine equity and the race against variants. The group was also able to view the patient registration process and flow, meet with patients, thank healthcare workers, view the gratitude wall, and observe operations.
“The Newton-Wellesley Hospital patient vaccine clinic at Tripadvisor is the result of a remarkable, community-wide effort undertaken in a short period of time to help advance the fight against COVID and protect overall public health across our region,” said Jonathan Snider, MD, Associate Chair of Family Medicine, Newton-Wellesley Hospital. “We are grateful not only to Tripadvisor for enabling this clinic to become a reality, but also to the many local officials and community members who have helped ensure its success. To date, we have administered more than 20,000 total doses of vaccine and are scheduled to vaccinate more than 850 patients per day this week.”
“Tripadvisor is committed to doing what we can to get our community through the pandemic. In addition to saving lives, we see in our data that vaccine distribution is a key to unlocking traveler demand and bringing guests back into the millions of travel businesses we serve on our platform - including locally loved hotels and restaurants,” said Seth Kalvert, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Tripadvisor Inc. “As a twenty year Massachusetts-based business, we’re proud to partner with Newton Wellesley Hospital and Mass General Brigham through the use of our temporarily unoccupied global headquarters to host this vaccine clinic. The healthcare team running the clinic are truly our heroes and it’s a pleasure showcasing this important work for Representative Auchincloss and our local leaders.”
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