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Spokane Regional Health Hires Third-Party Company to Help with Contact Tracing

As the COVID-19 pandemic grows, Spokane County has hired the Public Health Institute to support contact tracing efforts. Marta Induni, director of PHI’s Tracing Health program says contact tracing can help flatten the curve in the county.

  • KXLY Spokane

As coronavirus cases rise in Spokane County, Washington, the county has hired the Public Health Institute for contact tracing support. PHI works in the Pacific Northwest with the Oregon Public Health Institute. Currently only about 30 county public health staff are doing contact tracing, in addition to their other duties.

Working with PHI’s Tracing Health team will bring needed support for contact tracing efforts. Dr. Marta Induni, senior director of research for PHI and program director of Tracing Health says that contact tracing can help flatten the curve, and that providing support for people who need to quarantine is essential. “We help [those in quarantine] problem solve and you know, activate their networks to get them the support they need, as well as anything the county or the regional health district might be able to do,” she said.

Dr. Induni also explained the program’s structure and hiring:

 

“Our model is to have what we call ‘micro teams’ and each team has eight contact tracers, a supervisor and a resource coordinator…Our goal is not only to hire locally, but to hire from different communities — communities of color. We’re very focused on bilingual, bi-cultural people.” Marta Induni, program director, Tracing Health.

Click below to see the KXLY video and read the story.

Originally published by KXLY Spokane

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