Five St. Augustine’s Public Health Science Majors Hired as Contact Tracers for COVID-19

30 Jul 2020

staugadmin
Alumni, General, Students

Five St. Augustine’s Public Health Science Majors Hired as Contact Tracers for COVID-19

Congratulations to five public health science majors who have been hired and trained as Contact Tracers. They include two rising seniors, Tamika Sanders and Chuka Umeana, and three graduates of the program, Aziza Pope (May 2020), Asia Bethea (May, 2020), and Keshawn Carter (May 2018).

Contact tracing is an effective public health intervention. These public health science majors are a part of the team to assist the state Departments of Health and Human Services and local health departments with existing efforts to track and stop transmission of the contagious and deadly COVID-19 virus.

Contact tracers are trained to use a web-based client resource management (CRM) platform to notify close contacts of their exposure. They reach out to people who have been exposed to COVID-19, primarily via phone, text or emails. The aim is to determine the presence of symptoms, explain how they can keep themselves and others safe, refer them to testing, connect them to other resources as appropriate, and provide the appropriate isolation or quarantine education and guidance.

As Contact Tracers, they serve various counties in North Carolina and New York. Sanders is assigned to Durham County, Umeana to Wake County, Carter and Bethea to Lenoir County, and Pope is based in Brooklyn, New York.