Tapping into the minds and hearts of the local public health workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic

SETTING: Ottawa Public Health (OPH) provides public health programming and services in the Ottawa region. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the OPH COVID-19 Case and Contact Management Team was established to help manage the spread of COVID-19 and support individuals who test positive, and their close contacts. INTERVENTION: In order to guide and support the COVID-19 Case and Contact Management Team, the COVID-19 Strategic Support Team implemented an anonymous internal communication tool called the COVID-19 Case Management Forum. Case and Contact Management employees were invited to submit their questions, concerns, and words of encouragement on the forum, and the COVID-19 Strategic Support Team routinely replied to forum submissions via team email. OUTCOMES: Qualitative analyses of employee forum submissions revealed 6 main themes and 31 unique sub-themes related to questions, concerns, and feelings that arose throughout this pandemic response. Recurrent themes emerged relating to process questions, communication challenges, solution generation, and feelings of frustration. Summative content analyses of the COVID-19 Strategic Support team’s replies demonstrated 6 main answer types: explaining procedures, identifying resources, explaining rationales, human resource explanations, sharing employee feedback with relevant parties, and creating practice tools. IMPLICATIONS: The online forum tool was developed and implemented early in the pandemic response to provide key insights into OPH’s public health workforce needs and well-being throughout the COVID-19 response. The forum encouraged open dialogue and provided opportunities to establish clarity in a time of rapid situational change.