Outreach, Education, and Resources. In addition to a massive vaccine and testing initiative, APH dedicated significant staff expertise and resources to:

Inform and educate, using data analytics and key indicator metrics for public dashboards.
Prevent the spread of COVID-19 through disease surveillance and case investigation.
Inform and educate through public appearances, press releases, media interviews and social media.
Perform outreach and education through trusted sources including certified Community Health Worker (CHW) and neighborhood partners, and partnerships with community-based organizations.
Provide free guidance, scheduling and information through free public Nurse and Health Equity telephone lines for parents, school and childcare workers, businesses, and the general public.
Provide trusted, consistent guidance, resources, and support to childcare facilities, schools, and camps.
Monitor the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths to better inform community-wide prevention and staging recommendations.
Administer COVID-19 relief funds to assist communities in need.
Distribute PPE/health and safety supplies to individuals, families and organizations.

APH focused on improving transparency and equity in public information on COVID-19 by making this information available in multiple languages. The effort leveraged community partnerships and social media to help communicate directly using email (20,000 subscribers), Twitter (23,000 followers) and Facebook (40,000 followers), local radio stations, news outlets and the APH website. Two town hall meetings titled, “Moving Forward with COVID-19”, captured public input in seven different languages to inform and improve vaccination processes.

Our work is not done. New treatments, the development of variants, and improvements to vaccines continue to influence our response to COVID-19. As the pandemic continues, APH learns more about the virus and relies on data to guide our response. In fact, new data indicates that the Community Transmission Rate (CTR) may be able to serve as an advanced warning sign, informing the public to take precautions that will help avoid another surge and buy us time to get more of our community vaccinated.