An Academic–Health Department Community Partnership to Expand Disease Investigation and Contact Tracing Capacity and Efficiency During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Disease investigation and contact tracing are long-standing public health strategies used to control the spread of infectious disease. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, health departments across the country have lacked the internal workforce capacity and technology needed to efficiently isolate positive cases and quarantine close contacts to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This article describes an innovative disease investigation and contact tracing program developed through a formalized community partnership between a local county health department and local university. This innovative new program added 108 contact tracers to the county's public health workforce, as well as enabled these contact tracers to work remotely using a call center app and secure cloud-based platform to manage the county's caseload of cases and contacts. An overview of the requirements needed to develop this program (eg, hiring, health data security protocols, data source management), as well as lessons learned is discussed.

The Containment Scouts: First Insights into an Initiative to Increase the Public Health Workforce for Contact Tracing during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany

“…In the USA, several academic public health programmes and schools trained students as contact tracers in response to COVID-19 [18]. Community-based partnerships between universities and local health departments were established to compensate for workforce shortages [19][20][21]. These programmes were mostly volunteer-based [19,20,22,23], and students received academic credit and work experience in return [20,22].…”

“…Community-based partnerships between universities and local health departments were established to compensate for workforce shortages [19][20][21]. These programmes were mostly volunteer-based [19,20,22,23], and students received academic credit and work experience in return [20,22]. In one example, a funding opportunity enabled a programme to pay the contact tracers [19].…”

“…These programmes were mostly volunteer-based [19,20,22,23], and students received academic credit and work experience in return [20,22]. In one example, a funding opportunity enabled a programme to pay the contact tracers [19]. All programmes found in the literature provided training and were targeted at students with a background in public health or other health subjects [19,20,22].…”

“…In one example, a funding opportunity enabled a programme to pay the contact tracers [19]. All programmes found in the literature provided training and were targeted at students with a background in public health or other health subjects [19,20,22]. The workforce has also been upscaled in previous emergency situations, such as for Ebola in West Africa, including using volunteers to carry out contact tracing [24].…”

Appraisal of a Contact Tracing Training Program for COVID-19 in Greece Focusing on Vulnerable Populations

“…The ability to quickly expand quality services to meet demand has emerged as a problem in need of innovative solutions that will be crucial in the current, but also possible future, pandemics. Different models have been employed to address this need, from the use of digital technology to recruitment of furloughed staff, health sciences students and volunteer led services in the US and elsewhere [39][40][41][42][43][44][45].…”