FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –May 28, 2020
Fairfax County Health Department Partners with IPHI to Expand Contact Tracing Efforts
Today, the Fairfax County Health Department (FCHD) in Virginia announced a new partnership with the Institute for Public Health Innovation (IPHI) to hire and train staff for COVID-19 contact tracing efforts.
Across the country, state and local jurisdictions are ramping up contact tracing as a central component of the fight against the pandemic. Contact tracing is the process of communicating with individuals who have probable or diagnosed COVID-19 illness to help them recall everyone with whom they have had close contact and potentially exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Public health staff then reach out to those contacts to inform them of their potential exposure. As staff speak with contacts, they help individuals assess risk and share information and instructions for self-monitoring, isolation and staying healthy.
To help the Health Department scale up its contact tracing efforts, IPHI will recruit, hire and train contact tracing staff, community health workers, and other staff as needed who will be deployed to work as integrated members of the FCHD COVID-19 response team.
For more information on the initiative, see Fairfax County Health Department’s press release.
Information on available job opportunities and how to apply for the positions can be found on IPHI’s careers page at: https://www.institutephi.org/careers/
For more information on contact tracing, please visit: https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/health/novel-coronavirus/contact-investigations.