Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Arlington, VA, USA.
National Coalition of STD Directors, Washington, DC, USA.
Public Health Rep. 2022 Nov-Dec;137(2_suppl):11S-17S. doi: 10.1177/00333549221101327. Epub 2022 Jul 4.
In the United States, the public health response to control COVID-19 required rapid expansion of the contact tracing workforce from approximately 2200 personnel prepandemic to more than 100 000 during the pandemic. We describe the development and implementation of a free nationwide training course for COVID-19 contact tracers that launched April 28, 2020, and summarize participant characteristics and evaluation findings through December 31, 2020. Uptake of the online asynchronous training was substantial: 90 643 registrants completed the course during the first 8 months. In an analysis of a subset of course participants (n = 13 697), 7724 (56.4%) reported having no prepandemic public health experience and 7178 (52.4%) reported currently serving as case investigators, contact tracers, or both. Most participants who completed a course evaluation reported satisfaction with course utility (94.8%; 59 497 of 62 753) and improved understanding of contact tracing practice (93.0%; 66 107 of 71 048). These findings suggest that the course successfully reached the intended audience of new public health practitioners. Lessons learned from this implementation indicate that an introductory course level is appropriate for a national knowledge-based training that aims to complement jurisdiction-specific training. In addition, offering a range of implementation options can promote course uptake among public health agency staff. This course supported the emerging needs of the public health practice community by training a workforce to fill an important gap during the COVID-19 pandemic and could serve as a feasible model for enhancing workforce knowledge for future and ongoing public health threats.
在美国，为控制 COVID-19 而采取的公共卫生应对措施需要迅速扩大接触者追踪人员的规模，从大流行前的大约 2200 人增加到疫情期间的 10 多万人。我们描述了为 COVID-19 接触者追踪者开发和实施的一项免费全国性培训课程，该课程于 2020 年 4 月 28 日启动，并总结了截至 2020 年 12 月 31 日的参与者特征和评估结果。该在线异步培训课程的参与度很高：在头 8 个月里，有 90643 名注册者完成了该课程。在对课程参与者的一个子集（n=13697）进行的分析中，有 7724 人（56.4%）报告称在大流行前没有公共卫生经验，有 7178 人（52.4%）报告称目前担任病例调查员、接触者追踪员或两者兼而有之。大多数完成课程评估的参与者报告对课程实用性（94.8%；62753 人中的 59497 人）和对接触者追踪实践的理解（93.0%；71048 人中的 66107 人）有所提高。这些发现表明，该课程成功地覆盖了新公共卫生从业者这一目标受众。从这次实施中吸取的经验表明，对于旨在补充特定管辖范围培训的以知识为基础的全国性培训，一个入门级课程水平是合适的。此外，提供一系列实施选项可以促进公共卫生机构工作人员对课程的参与度。该课程通过培训一支劳动力来填补 COVID-19 大流行期间的重要空白，从而满足公共卫生实践社区的新兴需求，并可以作为为未来和持续的公共卫生威胁增强劳动力知识的可行模式。
