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How the CDC will expand the contact tracing workforce?

Question: In your 4/26 Q+A you addressed contact tracing and concluded that there will need to be a massive workforce expansion in order to carry it out. Can you tell us how the CDC will expand their workforce, qualifications required to work in this field going forward, and who pays for it all?

Answer: This is a big topic everywhere you turn. And there are numerous proposals on how to go about doing it, including Senator Gillibrand and Senator Bennet’s proposal, Health Force. Most experts agree that contact tracing can be easily taught and the skills do not require any higher-level educational background — a high school education suffices. Currently, it’s up to States and localities to establish their own contact tracing programs. For example, Partners in Health is working with the State of Massachusetts to establish a state-wide COVID-19 contact tracing program. In terms of a national response, experts suggest the cost will be multiple billions of dollars. Here’s a quick run down of the various proposals for a national response that I’m aware of:

  • Health Force: Senator Gillibrand and Senator Bennet’s proposal to address the dual health and economic crises facing the country by establishing a new, federally funded and locally-managed Health Force. Health Force members would be recruited from their communities to work in their communities on behalf of state and local public health organizations. Force members would be quickly trained and employed to conduct contact tracing. They would also fulfill other key COVID-19 related tasks, like assisting with testing, vaccination campaigns, health messaging, data collection and entry, food and medicine delivery to isolated individuals, health and social system navigators, and more. After the current crisis abates, Health Force members would continue to serve vulnerable communities, helping to bridge health and wellness gaps. The proposal would provide funding to all states and territories to hire hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country.
  • Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act: This is a companion bill to Health Force that is being led by Senator Coons and colleagues. The idea is to expand service opportunities to respond to the panoply of COVID-19-related needs — health and beyond — across the country, including contact tracing. This legislation would expand AmeriCorps positions from 75,000 to 150,000 in Year 1 and to 300,000 in Years 2 and 3.
  • Containment Corps: Senator Warren and Rep. Levin have also rolled out a strategy to address the contact tracing workforce gap. This plan would call for CDC to: a) develop a national strategy “to hire, train, and deploy nationwide individuals to augment public health authorities’ capacity [to conduct contact tracing]”; b) provide grants to states and local public health agencies to hire, train, and deploy such members; and c) provide regular reporting on such members. It would also require the Department of Labor to provide funding to state and tribal workforce agencies to link unemployed with Corps jobs.
  • U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps: This is Joe Biden’s plan to mobilize at least 100,000 Americans across the country who could, “serve in a variety of important functions, including ensuring contact tracing reaches every under-served community in America — ideally by members of those communities themselves…. U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps would become the permanent foundation for a stronger national community public health service that could eventually transition to fight the opioid epidemic and address other national public health priorities.” This idea is a bit of a combination of the above proposals.
  • Association of State and Territorial Health Officials: ASTHO recommends that Congress help scale up “existing capacity at the state, local and territorial” levels, rather than “set up a system outside existing public health agency response.” The national organization offers suggestions in terms of workforce and funding needs.
  • Bipartisan Group of 16 Public Health Leaders: Last week, a bipartisan group of public health leaders sent a letter to Congress requesting $12 billion to help expand the contact tracing workforce and $34 billion to support other elements of the public health response. As NPR reports, “The officials estimate the workforce needs to increase by 180,000 until a vaccine is on the market.”