Smoking. Cholesterol. Blood pressure. Obesity. It's common knowledge today that these all can lead to heart trouble. But in the 1940s, with one in two deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and even after President Franklin Roosevelt died from the effects of heart failure and a massive stroke, the information would have been considered revolutionary.

In this lecture, I was one of the first ones to describe in detail the various stages of disease and infection at the community level so that what was being presented in scientific evidence could then be translated to a way that people who may not have a medical or epidemiological background could ask the right questions to people who may have gotten infected. This was a rigorous training going into motivational interviewing techniques and also training in law, policy, and the physiological mechanisms of the virus.

When they had completed training in my class, they were not only ready to work as contact tracers, but they were ready to inform and educate fellow community members about how to be protected from the virus. This was a concerted effort by the State government and community colleges to try and create additional programs throughout the state. We trained multiple locales who then used our material to additionally inform how they were training contact tracers. This was truly a grassroots effort in which people within the community with minimal training could help halt the chains of transmission. Schools consulted our expertise before opening buildings and we were consulting with several stakeholders.

Week One: COVID-19 Basics, Basics of a Pandemic, CDC Guidance and Intro to Epidemiology (15 hours)

Week Two: Contact Tracer Requirements and Protocol (10 hours)

Week Three: Health Information Protection and Patient Privacy (10 hours)

Week Four: Contact Tracing in Various Scenarios, Customer Service, Cultural Sensitivity (10 hours)

PICO (T)

https://www.pasda.psu.edu/apps.asp