COVID-19 Response
HELPING SMALL BUSINESSES TACKLE COVID-19 From September 2020 through September 2021, the Center for Public Health Workforce Development partnered with the New Jersey Small Business Development Centers to help address COVID-19 concerns within the state’s expansive small business community. To help businesses protect their workplaces, employees and customers against COVID-19, the Center put on a series of webinars specifically tailored to the needs of this community, who was especially vulnerable to pandemic induced disruptions. Training topics included Maintaining Resiliency, Assessing Risk and Developing Safety Controls, Pandemic Response Planning, and Creating a Culture of Safety. In addition, Center staff met 1:1 with individual small business owners to provide tailored health and safety counseling. Through this program, we were able to assist daycare centers, restaurants, photographers, and many other types of small businesses across the state with developing and implementing COVID-19 controls.
COVID-19 CONTACT TRACING AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Beginning in May of 2020, the Center played an instrumental role in developing an online contact tracing training for the state’s roughly 3,000 new and current disease investigators/contact tracers.
Because of that experience, the Center was asked by University leaders to recruit and train a cadre of internal contact tracers that would assist our student health and occupational health centers with the significant numbers of students and staff/faculty that were impacted by COVID-19. These activities, delivered in close partnership with the local health departments that serve the three Rutgers campuses, were critical in helping to limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 on campus. The Center recruited and trained a team of 20 contact tracers, as well as Team Manager Nesreen Youness- Husseini, who brought a strong background in epidemiology and disease investigation to the role. This team also helped to staff essential services such as the Rutgers vaccine clinics and a Call Center. Although it decreased in size as the months progressed, and vaccine was available more broadly, the team remained in place through October 2022.
18 | Center for Public Health Workforce Development | 300 Atrium Drive, Suite 100 | Somerset, NJ 08873
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