Former First Lady Michelle Obama has shared a message of support for health care workers in Chicago in a one-and-a-half minute audio message distributed to 18 hospitals and three local nurses unions.
The South Side native acknowledged the extreme challenges health care workers are facing, thanked them for their hard work and said she knew – through their strength, compassion and dedication – that “we will get through this crisis.”
Mrs. Obama witnessed firsthand the dedication of nurses, doctors and other hospital staffers at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she worked for years building programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach and volunteer recruitment.
She took an unpaid leave of absence from the medical center when Barack Obama ran for president, and she resigned after he won the White House.
If members of the public want to send their own message of support to health care workers, University of Chicago Medicine is running a campaign called #thousandsofdifferences through which people are sending notes, artwork, videos, stories and more to health care workers. Hundreds of notes have so been shared and tagged with #thousandsofdifferences on Facebook and Twitter or sent directly to uchicagomedicine.org/thousandsofdifferences.
Click here to hear the message: https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/michelle-obama-thanks-frontline-workers-during-covid-19