The Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI will hire, train and manage over 300 contact tracers to track the spread of COVID-19 in Indianapolis through Dec. 31.
In collaboration with Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett and Dr. Virginia Caine of the Marion County Public Health Department, the Fairbanks School received $10.5 million to expand contact tracing in the city. This funding is part of the nearly $80 million allocated by the City-County Council in June for programming aimed at helping residents impacted by COVID-19.
Contact tracing tracks the person-to-person transmission of an infectious pathogen like SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19.
“The Fairbanks School of Public Health is uniquely positioned for this endeavor,” said Paul K. Halverson, the school’s founding dean. “Our ties to the Indianapolis community, coupled with the expertise of our public health practitioners, bring together the skills in project development, implementation, quality improvement, monitoring and evaluation that are necessary for this project to be successful.”
The school will hire both remote and field-based contact tracers, along with their supervisors, who will act as team leads for the contact tracers.
“Over the last several months, we have seen Indianapolis residents, businesses and organizations make sacrifices in order to combat the spread of COVID-19,” Hogsett said. “Increasing our ability to quickly and effectively engage in contact tracing can help us to preserve the progress we have made and better address outbreaks when they do occur. Indianapolis is lucky to have the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI as a partner in this program, providing their expertise, capacity and ability to quickly scale to address this critical moment.”
“We are proud to participate in this innovative partnership with the city of Indianapolis and the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI to ramp up contact tracing efforts and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Marion County,” said Caine, director of the Marion County Public Health Department and a Bicentennial Professor and associate professor of medicine at the IU School of Medicine.