DEPARTMENT: Health
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Dawn Emerick, Ed.D, Director
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT: A briefing providing updates on the COVID-19 Community Response Coalition workgroups
SUMMARY:
Metro Health will provide a briefing to update the progress made by the 5 workgroups as a part of the COVID-19 Community Response Coalition set up by the Health Transition Team’s Implementation Plan.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The COVID-19 Testing Task Force was first convened by Metro Health on March 18, 2020 to bring together laboratories, hospital systems, health care providers, community based clinics, and representatives from the Emergency Operations Center to assess the testing capacity for COVID-19 in San Antonio and Bexar County. The COVID-19 Testing Task Force was comprised of 16 healthcare sector organizations conducting COVID-19 specimen collection within Bexar County, and 16 laboratories conducting COVID-19 testing.
The COVID-19 Testing Task Force established the following five priorities:
1) Increase community testing with faster throughput;
2) Continuously evaluate testing criteria to meet community needs;
3) Increase health care provider education and engagement in testing;
4) Establish a self-screening website as a touch point for the community; and
5) Address barriers to testing within vulnerable populations.
As of June 1, the COVID-19 Testing Task Force has broadened its role (and changed its name) to provide oversight and coordination of all health sector partners involved in the monitoring progress and warning indictors, specimen collection and laboratory testing for COVID-19, ensuring adequate case investigations for all positive cases to identify their contacts, developing local policy and health alerts as well as coordinating education and enforcement activities.
This broader COVID-19 Community Response Coalition (CCRC) will be the central body where all stakeholders and agencies involved in COVID-19 response are communicating regularly and thus can quickly adjust and make changes to the response as needed.
The CCRC will provide critical guidance and oversight to all aspects of the public health response through the following five working groups:
• Indicator Monitoring
• Testing and Lab Reporting
• Contact Tracing
• Enforcement & Education
• Policy & Health Alerts
The CCRC is co-chaired by Dr. Barbara Taylor and the Metro Health Director, Dr. Dawn Emerick, who will serve as a liaison to the City and County leadership. Each working group is made up of health experts from a variety of local organizations and sectors based on the nature of the work. The working groups are co-chaired by a Metro Health team member and a community partner.
ISSUE:
Metro Health would like the opportunity to brief the Community Health and Equity Committee on progress made by the 5 workgroups as a part of the COVID-19 Community Response Coalition set up by the Health Transition Team’s Implementation Plan.
ALTERNATIVES:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
FISCAL IMPACT:
There is no fiscal impact at this time.
RECOMMENDATION:
This item is for briefing purposes only.