COVID-19 Response

Infectious Disease.

As COVID-19 cases, stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, and rigid behavioral modifications increased, she decided to respond to a request from the state of Delaware. She led a 15-person incident management assistance team of multidisciplinary responders from the CDC and trained 105 Delaware National Guard members to serve as a primary contact-tracing force in Delaware. After I built a culture of collaboration, she instructed the CDC team to develop a data management platform to identify COVID-19 clusters and track case surges. She drew on leading government sources to develop toolkits on infection-control practices for shared housing and independent living centers, as well as transportation systems. In a few months, the Delaware Public Health Department’s website started receiving 100K+ visitors, representing a 20% increase in website views. She instructed her team to create social media content for distribution to public health professionals, clinicians, community organizations, businesses, and the public, to deliver a unified message supporting recommended restrictions on congregate settings and public spaces. Her efforts helped Delaware respond to scientific inquiries on effective community risk mitigation strategies, including behavioral actions, thereby improving customer service. The guardsmen conducted contract tracing callbacks, resulting in more than 120 inquiries from the public, clinicians, and other stakeholders. Her efforts helped ensure that Delaware had a uniform government response and the autonomy to manage the details.