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An Academic-Health Department Community Partnership to Expand Disease Investigation and Contact Tracing Capacity and
Kendall A Leser1, M Cameron Hay, Brian Henebry
1College of Arts and Science & College of Education, Health and Society, Public Health Program, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (Dr Leser); Global Health Research Innovation Center, and Department of Anthropology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (Dr Hay); IT Services, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (Messrs Henebry and Virden); and Butler County General Health District, Hamilton, Ohio (Mss Patel and Bailer and Mr Luttrell-Freeman).
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.
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