UCI Public Health is partnering with the Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA) and the Orange County Health Equity COVID-19 Community-Academic Partnership to offer a free Health Equity Contact Tracing Workshop. The Workshop trains public health practitioners, students, community leaders, and residents to do contact tracing for COVID-19.

Contract tracers, sometimes known as “disease detectives,” are trained to detect likely secondary cases among close contacts of already identified (“index”) cases. Contact tracing will likely be crucial for disrupting transmission to the point that social distancing measures can be relaxed responsibly. It is expected that thousands of contact tracers will be needed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, as well as other infectious diseases. In places like Orange County, where communities are incredibly socio-culturally diverse, it is crucial to implement and practice contact tracing in a culturally-appropriate manner through a health equity lens.

This Workshop is designed with a fundamental focus on health equity. It integrates community knowledge about the impacts of the pandemic and pandemic mitigation strategies on low-income communities of color with established models of manual contact tracing and presents the latest knowledge about COVID-19 spread and mitigation. 

The Workshop aims to support the wide range of community leaders and residents, students, and public health practitioners whose work is needed across the full spectrum of pandemic mitigation, elimination, and equitable recovery. This includes those working to educate the broader public about evolving information about COVID-19; identify and notify individuals who have been exposed to the virus; support low-income communities of color disparately affected by COVID-19 in mitigating their exposures, quarantining, isolating, and recovering from the pandemic; and organizing community members for a recovery that builds community power and resilience to future pandemics and disasters. 

The Workshop is a series and will be delivered through popular education methods in a hybrid format of asynchronous online content, live online group-based discussions, and role-playing sessions. The workshop is available free to the public and runs July 20 – August 21, 2020.

OBJECTIVES

Participants will…

• Gain foundational knowledge of health science related to the COVID 19 virus, and health equity as both an outcome and approach to guide COVID-19 response efforts
• Build essential skills to serve as contact tracers, supporting COVID 19 patients to minimize spread of the virus in their communities
• Help to shape and communicate a proactive narrative around the causes of and strategies to address COVID-19 as part of a larger community-driven effort to achieve health through racial equity
• Cultivate a community organizing approach to engaging community members in transforming the conditions that have led to disproportionate COVID-19 impacts on Black, Latinx, immigrant, Indigenous communities, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Click here to register.