In the past several months, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a tremendous human toll. In the US, the devastation is particularly acute in low-income communities and among people of color. For over half a century, the nation’s Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) have been the nation’s largest safety net healthcare provider for the most marginalized populations across the country – including the uninsured and underinsured, people living in or near poverty, the homeless, racial and ethnic minorities, migrant health workers, and people living in rural communities. In the face of a re-emergence of COVID-19 or other infectious disease, there is opportunity to strengthen the FQHC’s role in pandemic response by building the capacity of the workforce to build on lessons learned to standardize workflows and tailor for context, including in the areas of telehealth, triaging patients, providing testing, prescribing prophylaxis when available and indicated, providing medical management, and linking clients to supportive services.
As such, Cicatelli Associates Inc. (CAI), a national training and capacity building 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, submits this proposal with principal partner, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), to the CDC National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases for Improving Clinical and Public Health Outcomes through National Partnerships to Prevent and Control Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Disease Threats. Together, we will establish a Pandemic Training Response Accountability Committee (TRAC) that will rapidly activate existing infrastructure to expedite pandemic response that is responsive to the unique needs of FQHC staff and patients.
Working in close coordination with the CDC, the TRAC will deploy a rapid multi-modal and accessible training program to build the capacity of FQHC healthcare providers at every level, from physicians and nurses to social workers, peers and patient navigators, to mobilize a rapid response to address the re-emergence of COVID-19 tailored to local context. We will leverage existing community health and COVID-19 registry data infrastructure to support rapid data aggregation and analytics to inform local response to the pandemic. We will integrate a trauma-informed lens to better understand and respond to both FQHC staff and the communities they serve in the midst of this incredibly stressful situation. The TRAC will be prepared to implement 5 mutually reinforcing strategies, Disseminate and Adopt, Inform and Adapt, Target and Train, Integrate and Extend, and Evaluate and Improve, at the national, and state and/or local level - prioritizing the most affected communities. Working in partnership with other national and regional organizations, the TRAC will rapidly activate our existing training management, delivery, and communication infrastructure, data surveillance systems, and relationships with FQHC, public health, academia, and CBOs in the affected areas, to expedite a pandemic response that is evidence-based and responsive to the unique needs of FQHC staff, patients, and local context. TRAC actions will be grounded in use of real-time data, gathered across FQHC partners, to monitor pandemic trends, identify priority populations and communities, and focus our efforts accordingly.
