You are here: Home >> COVID-19 Initiatives

COVID-19 Initiatives

The Mullan Institute has four initiatives to provide information on safely reopening and protecting the health of communities, the critical importance of getting health workforce policies right during the pandemic, and learning from the policy experimentation as it unfolds.
 

1. Contact Tracing Workforce Estimator: A tool for state and local leaders to prepare for COVID-19 contact tracing in order to safely reopen and protect the health of communities. ​The CT Estimator uses a baseline of 15 CTs per 100,000 population and increases the number of CTs, as needed, to contact trace the 14-day number of new COVID-19 cases for each county over the course of a week (JHU CSSE). Preset case contacts and CT work capacity (e.g. the number of case interviews, contact notifications, and contact follow-ups a CT can conduct daily) were set according to available data and expert opinion. The preset parameters assume number of case contacts with social distancing and work capacity to include some social needs evaluation and case management.
   ​
2. COVID-19 County Workforce Estimator: A tool to identify counties likely to experience workforce strain due to high rates of COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU occupancy. Using new county-level COVID-19 hospitalization and ICU projections provided by Premier Inc. and county-level data on the number of intensivists available provided by IQVIA, the Workforce Estimator calculates whether counties will have to implement crisis or contingency workforce staffing scenarios to accommodate COVID-19 surges. County executives can use this information to implement new emergency social distancing guidelines that may prevent future cases from developing as projected and mitigate expected hospital workforce strain.
   ​
3. ​Emergency Workforce Policies to Address COVID-19: One of the greatest risks of COVID-19 is that inadequate PPE and understaffing of frontline health workers will lead to severe fatigue and low morale, which further exacerbates attrition. This webinar series focuses on actions that we can take now to avoid entering a vicious cycle of staffing shortages.
   ​
4. Emergency Vaccinator Policies for COVID-19: An interactive map showing states with temporary, emergency policies authorizing specific professions to administer COVID-19 vaccines. This new interactive tool geographically displays state policies that expand on the types of personnel authorized to administer COVID-19 vaccines beyond physicians, advanced practice nurses, and other clinicians whose scopes of practice traditionally includes vaccinations. Tracking workforce flexibility at the state level will allow researchers and policy-makers to view the geographic distribution of these policies and compare them across states.

​
We welcome comments and questions at [email protected].