KU partners with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, uses grant to assess COVID-19 response

Thanks to a $40,000 grant from the Kansas Health Foundation, a team from the University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development (CCHD) has partnered with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health and other community organizations to study the COVID-19 response in the county, according to a news release from the University of Kansas.

“The idea of the initiative is to help the local government and public health agency better understand and support their communitywide COVID-19 response efforts — and ultimately to reduce transmission and promote health in the community,” Christina Holt, assistant director with the CCHD, said. Holt is the leading the work under the grant.

“We’ve worked over decades helping communities document their public health interventions,” Holt said. “We’re implementing an adaptation of that same systematic methodology for COVID-19 response and recovery efforts and will use that data to better understand and shape the local response efforts and share lessons learned more broadly.”

Part of the research being conducted included the setting up of a customized Community Check Box Evaluation System to gather and interpret COVID-19 data from multiple sources in Douglas County, connecting the information to changing policies and procedures meant to combat the spread of coronavirus in the county, the release said.

“The work of the Center for Community Health and Development to document and assess our local COVID-19 response efforts is the latest in a long line of collaborative projects,” Dan Partridge, director of Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, said. “We are excited to be able to leverage the center’s expertise and learn in near real time how we can best help our community stay safe and well.”