‘The Pandemic Has Shown How Quickly We Can Make Something Happen’.

Typically, I am the epidemiologist for the Population Health Information Tool program (a pilot data sharing initiative) at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH). With the advent of COVID-19, I (along with countless others at DPH) have refocused my time on supporting the pandemic response.

Here in the Office of Data Management and Outcomes Assessment, within DPH’s Office of Population Health, our expertise and resources lie in large-scale data resources within the department and throughout the state. When the pandemic reached Massachusetts, we jumped to start putting together the state’s COVID-19 data in a meaningful way.

I have worked on three different data dashboard topics so far, spanning from the basic infectious disease indicators that are released daily to the public, to hospital capacity, to the impacts of COVID-19 on the social determinants of health. These dashboards will serve both internal and external audiences when they are complete.

Working for the state during this time provides its own challenges, opportunities, and monumental successes. We see an opportunity to frame the pandemic with a lens towards health equity that will reach a broad audience and potentially have a significant impact. At the same time, there are obstacles in collecting the data to make the immediate situation—particularly how people of color are being disproportionately impacted—actionable.

Another challenge working at DPH is maintaining consistent, clear messaging. The constantly-evolving nature of the pandemic has made this difficult, and has certainly delayed a lot of our most ambitious communication efforts.

Things move slower than anyone would like in state government, and we are reliant on a web of systems to get us what we need. In some ways, a pandemic has only made this worse, with networks already strapped for resources and devoting their time differently.

But in other ways the pandemic has shown just how quickly we can make something happen. For example, we realized early on that there was really no mechanism in place for hospitals to provide daily bed counts and inventory updates—because, before now, it wasn’t something that was needed on a close-to-real-time basis. About a week after identifying this need, the mechanism was in place and most hospitals were sending their updates. About a week after that, we were consistently hitting full reporting compliance. I was not personally involved with setting up these efforts, but I work with these data daily and get to see their immense value in this crisis.

Additionally, I have been helping to staff the 211 COVID-19 call center. They wanted DPH employees to be able to answer the public’s questions around COVID-19 in a one-stop-shop, and I’m so glad I volunteered.

It’s easy for me to get lost in the data surrounding bed counts and hospitalization rates, but the call center has reminded me of the importance of clear communication and the low levels of health literacy experienced by the majority of residents, especially during a health crisis. It has been a truly grounding experience, as I’m fielding calls from those who were laid off, or feel unsafe at work, or are charged with taking care of an elderly family member and feel helpless in keeping them well.

The perspective working inside DPH has been valuable, and the opportunity to contribute to the response has been huge, but the stark reminder of the fragility of so many people’s day-to-day lives has probably left the greatest mark.

Lisa Murray (SPH’19) is an epidemiologist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.