Covid19 Pandemic Response

COVID19 Pandemic Response

Wellbeing Care Community – Rebuilding Stronger Communities after a Pandemic or Disaster

Community-Based Organizations or state and local governments using the Wellbeing Care Community system can more effectively help individuals recover medically, economically, and socially from natural disaster, social unrest, or health calamities like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Request a Demo
Improving Community Health and Well-Being Outcomes One Person, One Community at a Time

The current COVID-19 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus [SARS-CoV-2]) pandemic represents a “perfect storm” disaster that will have major long-term impacts on many communities. From the immediate health impacts for individuals who have contracted the disease, to job layoff/loss and the economic impact that will have on individuals and families and beyond, people will be dealing with the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic for months and years to come. Time is of the essence for communities to respond to the COVID 19 crisis in a way that not only minimizes the immediate impact, but also provides a foundation for long term recovery. To assist in this process, eTransX offers the Wellbeing Care Community system (WCC) – a robust, unified information systems platform that can be used to help communities respond and recover from the COVID 19 pandemic.

Community Reslience
Using the WCC System to Respond and Recover from a Natural Disaster or Public Health Epidemic

In responding to a disaster or disease outbreak, the WCC system can provide a central one stop system that can be linked to other federal, state, and local agencies that are posting regular updates regarding services and programs associated with the disaster or disease outbreak. This provides organizations and community, regional and state leaders with a central place to go to keep up with the many related announcements and updates. It also provides a central place for defining and managing surveys and assessments to collect additional information.

Regional Command Center

At the heart of the WCC system is the ability to develop and manage specific personalized action plans that can be based on proven evidence-based practices and protocols. This provides consistency in supporting specific guidelines and protocols for responding and recovering from the COVID-19 crisis. This includes coordinating efforts with local healthcare providers to manage referrals and service orders with social, economic, employment, housing, and behavioral needs.

Community Level – The WCC system is utilized to:
  • Help the designated community anchor organization identify and onboard specific CBOs that will be involved with using the WCC system to share information and/or facilitate the coordinated delivery of services in the community to help individuals, employers, and families respond and recover from stronger and faster.
  • Support the ability of participating CBOs to update in real time a listing and description of their available information resources and/or services including descriptions of any eligibility requirements for accessing and using their information or services.
  • Support the ability of participating CBOs to send, receive and respond to service orders and referrals with other CBOs in the community in real time and share data securely.
  • Support the ability to capture valuable information that can be used to track progress in real time, identify gaps in care, and provide information for identifying opportunities for continuous improvement
  • Connect all key stakeholders in the community/region
  • Develop and manage strategy maps and metrics linking specific stakeholder roles and tasks
  • Build and manage a community/regional resources directory of available services and programs
  • Collect key data in real-time using a built in data integration engine to interface with existing community systems
Personal Level – The WCC system supports CBOs in their efforts to:
  • Conduct personal needs assessments of individual/family participants, and develop and manage personalized recovery action plans and pathways for the participating individuals and families
  • Assign access to authorized personal support team members (family members, friends, peers, mentors) that will be working with the CBO with helping participating individuals and families with their recovery action plans
  • Track the application/request process and track the delivery of services and supports directly to individuals and families with the ability to provide and document immediate feedback on the delivery of the CBO services.
  • This includes coordinating efforts with local healthcare providers to manage referrals and service orders with social, economic, employment, housing, and behavioral needs.
  • Conduct assessments of personal needs/circumstances for individuals with substance use disorders
  • Build and manage personal evidence based success pathways
  • Generate and manage service orders and referrals
  • Track personal progress results and trigger interventions as needed
  • Promote ongoing personal and care team engagement

In addition to the short-term response effort, the WCC system provides a foundational system for long term recovery of affected communities.

How is this different from normal recovery procedures?

The WCC system helps communities implement a community resilience approach – to mobilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations. Communities that are resilient are able to minimize any disaster, making the return to normal life as effortless as possible.[i] This community-wide resilience effort requires a focus in both the public health realm and in the economic health realm. An illustration of this community resilience approach is illustrated in Exhibit A.[ii] The community resilience approach is more comprehensive than traditional disaster recovery efforts. With the community resilience approach, the entire community is engaged in the response and recovery effort – not just public health and first responders. The differences between these two approaches to community disaster preparedness and response are shown in Exhibit B. [2]

Exhibit B: Traditional Disaster Preparedness versus Community Resilience Preparedness
Traditional Disaster Preparedness and Response
  • Individual households and their readiness to respond to emergencies
  • Disaster-specific functions (e.g., earthquake building codes, training staff to provide first aid)
  • Government’s response in the first few days and weeks after a disaster
  • Emergency plans and supplies only
  • Self-sufficient individuals or households
Community Resilience Preparedness and Response
  • Community members working together to respond to and recover from emergencies
  • Merging of other community efforts that build social, economic, and health well-being
  • Diverse network of government and nongovernmental organizations in preparing for, responding to and recovering from disaster
  • Collaboration and engagement of the whole of community for problem-solving
  • Self-sufficient community through neighbor-to-neighbor connections and strong social networks
Using WCC to Help Control the Spread of COVID-19
A comprehensive approach to controlling the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus can be summarized in five words – Test, Trace, Transition, Track and Treat:
  • Test – identify those that need testing and coordinate access to tests – communicating the test results in a timely manner to the individuals and to the appropriate community health agencies
  • Trace – if a person tests positive, the system helps contact tracers contact exposed individuals to inform them to take necessary actions
  • Transition – for those that test positive and those who have been exposed , the system is used to facilitate isolation and quarantining – that includes providing the necessary wrap-around services (housing, food, emotional/mental counseling, healthcare/medication management, childcare, temporary funds) for the required period of time.
  • Tracking – the system can facilitate tracking those in isolation and quarantine for compliance and to trace for any new symptoms or health conditions that will require treatment
  • Treatment – the system can be used to coordinate access to treatment as needed
Use of effective technology such as the WCC system acts as a force multiplier so that one worker can connect with many more people in the community. Contact tracing requires`{`3`}`:
  • Identifying an individual who has been clinically confirmed as having COVID-19;
  • Identifying and listing epidemiologically meaningful contacts of that individual;
  • Communicating with that list of contacts to warn them of potential exposure, and linking them to public health officials, diagnostic services, or self-isolation information and services;
  • Monitoring symptoms of people on the contact list until diagnostic results show that a person is not infected, or is beyond a reasonable time frame, such as the incubation period of the virus;
  • Visualization and analytics to optimize and monitor efficacy of contact tracers.
Key features of the eTransX WCC system for controlling the spread of the coronavirus include:
  • Ability to grant access to electronic educational materials and track the viewing of those educational materials
  • Ability to track available community based resources, treatment offerings, and service openings
  • Ability to manage referrals, appointments, and service orders associated with community resource and service offerings
  • Ability to easily update and trace contacts – utilizing email, phone call logs, texting, and video visits that are fully integrated into the WCC system (see exhibit B for an example of the WCC contact tracing tree diagram)
  • Ability to develop personalized action plans for those in isolation or quarantine
  • Ability to assign personal support team members to facilitate testing, isolation, quarantine
  • Ability to capture and electronically share information (e.g. test results) in a fully HIPAA and 42CFR secure manner
  • Ability to support fully integrated texting, email, and video conferencing (and track all interactions in a single secured database)
Exhibit C: eTransX WCC Contact Tracing – Tree View
Tracing - eTransX
Providing an Ecosystem for Building Back Better, Faster
Resource Center eTransX

Beyond the COVID-19 crisis, the WCC system provides an ideal platform for supporting future community or regional well-being initiatives that will support efforts of the community and region to build back better faster – by helping communities coordinate efforts to address root causes of poor health, personal trauma, poverty and inequality. Examples of these initiatives are shown below in Exhibit D.

Exhibit D: Building Back Better, Faster – Using a Shared Community Ecosystem

Return on Investment

Using the WCC system will result in the collection of valuable real time data that can be fed to other community systems as needed, leveraging eTransX’s 20 years of experience in automating data interfaces and data sharing between external systems. The Wellbeing Care Community platform can be a fundamental driver in accelerating the rate and strength of your community’s recovery.

[1]Resilience Builder – Tools for Strengthening Disaster Resilience in Your Community; Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Program, RAND Corporation, and Community Partners, June 2015
[2] en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Community_resilience – accessed 03-20-20
[3] A National Plan to Enable Comprehensive COVID-19 Case Finding and Contact Tracing in the US,Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Health Security and ASTHO, April 23, 2020