COVID-19: Immediate Community Needs
| Needs | How Public Health and Primary Care Can Collaborate | |
|---|---|---|
| Testing, tracking, and tracing | Isolate cases and quarantine contacts to reduce transmission | Expand and link public health and primary care testingProvide patient identification, supportive treatment, and resource support for isolationEstablish contact identification and tracing and provide resource support for quarantine |
| Identify patients who have had COVID-19 infections | Develop protocols for interpreting and implementing serologic testingConduct multi-system analyses on the impact of COVID-19 infection on functional, behavioral, and financial impairment | |
| Identify, investigate, and manage clusters | Using electronic health and public health records, identify the locations and mechanisms of infection transmissionIdentify equity-grounded strategies to address clusters | |
| Recovery | Plan for mass immunization | Stratify risk to inform vaccine distributionDeliver vaccine education by leveraging community partnershipsDistribute vaccinesIdentify immunization locations (eg, public health departments, points of dispensing, pharmacies, schools, community centers/YMCAs, and community health centers, long-term care facilities, shelters) |
| Community identification, creation, and engagement.Engaging patients to address ongoing needs | Identify patients in need of primary care (ie, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated, and first contact care) | Provide diagnosis, treatment, and careIn-personTelehealthMobile delivery to homes |
| Identify patients with (or at risk of) mental, emotional, or behavioral health problems | Provide treatment and referralsDeliver suicide prevention interventionsAddress substance useTarget:Youth and young adultsElderlyOther at-risk communities including homeless, non-English speakers, refugees, migrant workers, individuals with serious mental illnesses | |
| Integrate care | Integrate across multiple domains, including prevention, acute illness, chronic disease management, multiple chronic conditions, mental health, and family care, long-term care, assisted living. | |
| Community leadership development | Create local community medical, public health leadership activities | Provide opportunities for clinicians (Physicians, NPs, PAs) to meet regularly with public health leadershipCo-create education and community programs that would feature primary care and public health teamsPartner with medical and other health professions educational institutions to educate and train the future health workforce |
Abbreviations: NP, nurse practitioner; PA, physician assistant; COVID-19, Coronavirus disease 2019.