Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) CDC-RFA-CK-24-0002 - The mission of Delaware’s Division of Public Health (DPH) is to protect and promote the health of all people in Delaware. As of July 1, 2023, DPH serves approximately 1,031,890 residents, an increase of 9% from the previous 5-year budget cycle, along with a record 9.8 million overnight visitors, with a total of 28.3 million visitors, recorded in 2021, an increase of 27% from 2020. Add to that our liaison and proximity to metropolitan areas (Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C.), as well as similar relationships established with other states within FEMA Region III, including a military Airforce base with its own diverse population to support international transport of military operations and a commercial airport in Wilmington, DPH functions as the only government-based public health entity in Delaware with jurisdictional responsibility over localized and state-wide events. This lends to having a diverse and unique set of infectious disease monitoring. Delaware’s population demographics include 2/3 of the population identifying as white, with approximately a quarter of the population defined as African American, with 10% as Hispanic/Latino, including approximately 10% considered at or below the poverty level. More importantly, the socioeconomic population varies across the state in terms of density, with an urban, densely populated population in Delaware’s north most New Castle County, while more southern, rural communities set Sussex County. These demographics highlight DPH’s urgency to improve data collection and reporting and policy implementation to reduce health disparities. With the winding down of COVID related funding, DPH is at great risk of losing these advances in health equity and expect to use this new ELC cycle to expand current successes. Though new to the Project Director role for Delaware’s ELC, The Laboratory Director has spent the past 15 years working and supporting activities across ELC components, including the ebbs and flows with operational successes and gaps between each of our functions (epidemiology, laboratory, and HIS). DPH strives to maintain an effective partnership between the three functions, though there are still needs for continuous quality improvement within the individual areas that will be addressed within this new ELC Cooperative Agreement, specifically to strengthen the three core strategies of surveillance, detection and response, prevention and intervention, and coordination and partnerships. The previous 5-year cycle included the COVID-19 pandemic response. Though the pandemic, primarily through COVID -related ELC funding and supplemental funding, enabled DPH to greatly increase our workforce, data modernization, and population health from a variety of resources to respond to SARS-CoV-2, it also improved the health equity of our population. Through our partnership with state and community leaders, DPH were able to proactively connect with the community through “boots on the ground” initiatives to support implementation of immunization stratagems, housing accommodations, and networks for future support services. Additionally, DPH were able to implement a high sophisticated dashboard, My Healthy Community (MHC), initially for SARS-CoV-2 tracking, but to expand into social determinants of health. This included environmental contamination indicators, healthy lifestyles, health services utilizations, and climate and health, community safety, and more. Like national trends, Delaware observed significant mortality as it relates to age and race. Our dashboard, My Healthy Community (delaware.gov), was able to showcase trends between demographics, as well as how immunization campaigns supported prevention, including outreach to high risk populations. Despite the ongoing pandemic, Delaware continued to support infectious disease testing and reporting, particularly for many emerging, and reemerging public health threats. Though morbidity and mortality of reportable diseases were greatly
