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Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis
BACKGROUND: Contact tracing is an important public health tool for curbing the spread of infectious diseases. Effective and efficient contact tracing involves the rapid identification of individuals with infection and their exposed contacts and ensuring their isolation or quarantine, respectively. M...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9668330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36240019 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/40977 |
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author | Udeagu, Chi-Chi N Pitiranggon, Masha Misra, Kavita Huang, Jamie Terilli, Thomas Ramos, Yasmin Alexander, Martha Kim, Christine Lee, David Blaney, Kathleen Keeley, Chris Long, Theodore Vora, Neil M |
author_facet | Udeagu, Chi-Chi N Pitiranggon, Masha Misra, Kavita Huang, Jamie Terilli, Thomas Ramos, Yasmin Alexander, Martha Kim, Christine Lee, David Blaney, Kathleen Keeley, Chris Long, Theodore Vora, Neil M |
author_sort | Udeagu, Chi-Chi N |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Contact tracing is an important public health tool for curbing the spread of infectious diseases. Effective and efficient contact tracing involves the rapid identification of individuals with infection and their exposed contacts and ensuring their isolation or quarantine, respectively. Manual contact tracing via telephone call and digital proximity app technology have been key strategies in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. However, many people are not reached for COVID-19 contact tracing due to missing telephone numbers or nonresponse to telephone calls. The New York City COVID-19 Trace program augmented the efforts of telephone-based contact tracers with information gatherers (IGs) to search and obtain telephone numbers or residential addresses, and community engagement specialists (CESs) made home visits to individuals that were not contacted via telephone calls. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of information gathering and home visits to the yields of COVID-19 contact tracing in New York City. METHODS: IGs looked for phone numbers or addresses when records were missing phone numbers to locate case-patients or contacts. CESs made home visits to case-patients and contacts with no phone numbers or those who were not reached by telephone-based tracers. Contact tracing management software was used to triage and queue assignments for the telephone-based tracers, IGs, and CESs. We measured the outcomes of contact tracing–related tasks performed by the IGs and CESs from July 2020 to June 2021. RESULTS: Of 659,484 cases and 861,566 contact records in the Trace system, 28% (185,485) of cases and 35% (303,550) of contacts were referred to IGs. IGs obtained new phone numbers for 33% (61,804) of case-patients and 11% (31,951) of contacts; 50% (31,019) of the case-patients and 46% (14,604) of the contacts with new phone numbers completed interviews; 25% (167,815) of case-patients and 8% (72,437) of contacts were referred to CESs. CESs attempted 80% (132,781) of case and 69% (49,846) of contact investigations, of which 47% (62,733) and 50% (25,015) respectively, completed interviews. An additional 12,192 contacts were identified following IG investigations and 13,507 following CES interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Gathering new or missing locating information and making home visits increased the number of case-patients and contacts interviewed for contact tracing and resulted in additional contacts. When possible, contact tracing programs should add information gathering and home visiting strategies to increase COVID-19 contact tracing coverage and yields as well as promote equity in the delivery of this public health intervention. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9668330 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96683302022-11-17 Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis Udeagu, Chi-Chi N Pitiranggon, Masha Misra, Kavita Huang, Jamie Terilli, Thomas Ramos, Yasmin Alexander, Martha Kim, Christine Lee, David Blaney, Kathleen Keeley, Chris Long, Theodore Vora, Neil M JMIR Public Health Surveill Original Paper BACKGROUND: Contact tracing is an important public health tool for curbing the spread of infectious diseases. Effective and efficient contact tracing involves the rapid identification of individuals with infection and their exposed contacts and ensuring their isolation or quarantine, respectively. Manual contact tracing via telephone call and digital proximity app technology have been key strategies in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. However, many people are not reached for COVID-19 contact tracing due to missing telephone numbers or nonresponse to telephone calls. The New York City COVID-19 Trace program augmented the efforts of telephone-based contact tracers with information gatherers (IGs) to search and obtain telephone numbers or residential addresses, and community engagement specialists (CESs) made home visits to individuals that were not contacted via telephone calls. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of information gathering and home visits to the yields of COVID-19 contact tracing in New York City. METHODS: IGs looked for phone numbers or addresses when records were missing phone numbers to locate case-patients or contacts. CESs made home visits to case-patients and contacts with no phone numbers or those who were not reached by telephone-based tracers. Contact tracing management software was used to triage and queue assignments for the telephone-based tracers, IGs, and CESs. We measured the outcomes of contact tracing–related tasks performed by the IGs and CESs from July 2020 to June 2021. RESULTS: Of 659,484 cases and 861,566 contact records in the Trace system, 28% (185,485) of cases and 35% (303,550) of contacts were referred to IGs. IGs obtained new phone numbers for 33% (61,804) of case-patients and 11% (31,951) of contacts; 50% (31,019) of the case-patients and 46% (14,604) of the contacts with new phone numbers completed interviews; 25% (167,815) of case-patients and 8% (72,437) of contacts were referred to CESs. CESs attempted 80% (132,781) of case and 69% (49,846) of contact investigations, of which 47% (62,733) and 50% (25,015) respectively, completed interviews. An additional 12,192 contacts were identified following IG investigations and 13,507 following CES interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Gathering new or missing locating information and making home visits increased the number of case-patients and contacts interviewed for contact tracing and resulted in additional contacts. When possible, contact tracing programs should add information gathering and home visiting strategies to increase COVID-19 contact tracing coverage and yields as well as promote equity in the delivery of this public health intervention. JMIR Publications 2022-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9668330/ /pubmed/36240019 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/40977 Text en ©Chi-Chi N Udeagu, Masha Pitiranggon, Kavita Misra, Jamie Huang, Thomas Terilli, Yasmin Ramos, Martha Alexander, Christine Kim, David Lee, Kathleen Blaney, Chris Keeley, Theodore Long, Neil M Vora. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (https://publichealth.jmir.org), 15.11.2022. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Udeagu, Chi-Chi N Pitiranggon, Masha Misra, Kavita Huang, Jamie Terilli, Thomas Ramos, Yasmin Alexander, Martha Kim, Christine Lee, David Blaney, Kathleen Keeley, Chris Long, Theodore Vora, Neil M Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title | Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title_full | Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title_fullStr | Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title_full_unstemmed | Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title_short | Outcomes of a Community Engagement and Information Gathering Program to Support Telephone-Based COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Descriptive Analysis |
title_sort | outcomes of a community engagement and information gathering program to support telephone-based covid-19 contact tracing: descriptive analysis |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9668330/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36240019 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/40977 |
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