In the Major League – CCHD’s COVID-19 Emergency Response

About two years ago, I transferred to the Clinton County Health Department (CCHD) after 8 years as Clinton County’s Recreation Director. Functioning in an emergency response for the first time, and being a former collegiate softball player, I see lots of similarities between softball teams and public health response teams.

Any time you start with a new team there’s training. CCHD offers lots of training, including ICS, or Incident Command System. Every new employee starts with ICS 100 and ICS 200 level training along with NIMS (National Incident Management System). ICS/NIMS training ensures that CCHD staff can function effectively as a team in the event of an emergency – kind of like preseason training. It also ensures that we are able to speak the same emergency management language as other teams, like Law Enforcement and Emergency Services personnel. We complete drills (think scrimmages) frequently to practice these principles in simulated events.

As part of a Public Health team, I always understood the possibility of being called up to the big leagues (like a pandemic). Fast forward to the 2020 Spring Season where I’m playing in the championship game against COVID-19!

Behind every successful team is good coach. In a public health crisis such as this pandemic, our coach, aka Incident Commander, is Clinton County’s Director of Public Health. Several Section Chiefs act as assistant coaches responsible for certain aspects of the game/incident. Branch Leaders and Division Supervisors oversee the work assignments of players in their section. The Incident Commander and Section Chiefs, along with several liaisons and the incident’s public information staff work together to develop a strategy but it is the Incident Commander who approves the plan for each operational period (game). The team carries out the plan and the ICS team has a lot of different players, like a softball team.

Planning Section Chief
during pre-shift briefing.

There is a Safety Officer. For this incident, the safety officer is a member of CCHD’s Environmental Health and Safety Division. She assesses safety in all aspects of our response – from large population-based safety concerns to smaller internal safety issues, like the time our office was using several types of disinfecting products that should not have been mixed. Thank-you safety officer!

Organization is key to a good emergency response. The incident’s Planning Section Chief facilitates weekly and daily briefings, as well as command and general staff, tactics, and planning meetings. Meetings stay on track under her guidance. A written plan with specific objectives is generated for each operational period.

Clinton County’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) has been handling logistics. They are connected to the NYS Office of Emergency Services and work to ensure that Clinton County has the supplies it needs. They’ve been thrown a few curveballs but have kept the flow of PPE (personal protective equipment), testing materials, etc. coming.

Public Information Officers (PIO) manage communications creating press releases, coordinating video events, and monitoring social media. I’ve been rotated into a PIO position several times during this COVID-19 pandemic as a member of the Public Information & Education Team. We have fielded more than 1700 phone calls from the public to date.

Several liaisons help us reach out to other teams. CCHD’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness Coordinator acts as a liaison to UVHN-CVPH and the Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor is filling the role of Local Government Liaison in this incident.

I&Q Team getting ready
to deliver quarantine
orders.

Last but certainly not least is the I&Q Team (isolation and quarantine). They’re like outfielders. They cover a lot of ground, are extremely reliable, and are counted on to pull out the occasional diving catch. The I&Q Team are the folks who do the contact tracing required for a communicable illness like COVID-19. They determine who each positive case has been in contact with and issue isolation and quarantine orders as needed. They communicate daily with those in isolation and quarantine. Not only do they check in on symptoms, they make sure these individuals have essentials (like food and safe housing), and check on their mental health, often with an assist from the Human Services Branch.

In addition to our starters, we also have a strong bench waiting to jump in when needed. Many CCHD staff members are functioning under a COOP (Continuation of Operations Plan), doing typical day-to-day work with some modifications, but constantly keeping up with new guidance and training so that they are ready to pitch in and help out at a moment’s notice.

As far as teams go, and I’ve been on a lot of them, this one is a World Series kind of team.

Molly Flynn

Senior Public Health Educator

Clinton County Health Department