Program Connecting Students with Local Health Departments Shows Promise Beyond COVID-19.
Program Connecting Students with Local Health Departments Shows Promise Beyond COVID-19
Jacey Greece and Patricia Elliott, clinical associate professors of community health sciences, led an evaluation of the Academic Public Health Volunteer Corps to identify lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and inform recommendations for sustainability.
In April 2020, local public health departments across Massachusetts were quickly becoming overwhelmed by the demands of COVID-19, its increasing case counts, and the influx of information surrounding the novel virus.
To better meet these demands, the Academic Health Department Consortium developed the Academic Public Health Volunteer Corps (APHVC), an initiative to establish partnerships between academic institutions across the Commonwealth and local public health departments to assist in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest percentage of APHVC volunteers came from the School of Public Health, with over 600 students jumping into action, along with a number of faculty, staff, and alumni, to tackle a range of emerging public health needs, from contact tracing and data analysis to community outreach and social media management.
Since then, the APHVC has played a critical role in supporting the work of local health departments while also giving students real world experience and professional development opportunities. Through a seed grant from the Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Jacey Greece and Patricia Elliott, clinical associate professors of community health sciences, have spent the last year conducting an evaluation of the APHVC to identify lessons learned and inform recommendations for replication and sustainability. The grant also supported five SPH students in working on the evaluation team.
Greece recently presented the evaluation findings at the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) Annual Conference in San Diego, California, where the team’s work was nominated for a practice-based award.
“The APHVC and our evaluation of it is an effort that we feel strongly will strengthen the ties between academic public health and local public health and will continue to be a mutually beneficial collaboration for years to come,” says Greece. “We are incredibly honored to have our evaluation approach and findings recognized on a national scale in this way.”
To conduct the evaluation, the team used a mixed-methods approach that aligned with the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to gather both qualitative and quantitative data to better understand local health departments’ engagement with and perceptions of the APHVC, regardless of whether the departments collaborated with APHVC volunteers or not. They sent local public health departments in Massachusetts a survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the department’s resources, successes and challenges of utilizing APHVC volunteers, and future use of the program. Results from the survey informed focus groups and interviews with the health departments, where participants provided additional information about facilitators and barriers that influenced the adaptation, implementation, and continued maintenance of the APHVC.
Findings showed that the APHVC was effective in filling resource gaps within local public health departments across the state, building capacity, and providing high quality deliverables to advance health equity and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some local health departments experienced concerns around adopting the APHVC model, citing, for example, a lack of time and resources to train volunteer placements.
To improve and streamline the adoption of the APHVC in the future, the evaluation team leveraged health department’s perspectives and experiences to generate practical recommendations to inform best practices and future iterations of the program. Recommendations ranged from creating a better student and alumni volunteer matching process and enhancing marketing efforts and outreach, to restructuring the model to account for volunteer turnover and providing a liaison for local health departments to streamline communication, training, and onboarding for participants.
Many of these actionable recommendations are already being integrated into practice across the state. For example, since the initial evaluation, the APHVC model has transitioned into the APHC, which removes the volunteer component of the program and establishes a compensated staffing structure to ensure sustainability and replication, particularly during non-pandemic times.
“The APHVC model was strong to begin with since it merged the innovation, skills, and availability of students and alumni with the very real need in local health to fill gaps in services and infuse efforts with increased staffing and support,” says Elliott. “Our recommendations and revisions to the initial model only strengthen the ability of the new APHC to use evidence and innovation to help local health departments respond to community needs, especially in times of crisis, while giving structure, oversight, and support to the students, alumni, and departments.”
In public health, it can often be difficult to take a mixed methods evaluation and produce findings that lead to real, practical change, highlights Greece. This is because the qualitative and quantitative data gathered often results in a lot of information that is hard to translate into actionable steps.
“The recognition of our evaluation—not just for the methods we used but also for the quality of the recommendations for practice change—is why we do this work,” she says. “We want to uncover lessons to inform recommendations that move the field forward. This project has done just that with our partners now taking our recommendations for future use in Massachusetts. And working with our amazing students throughout the process enhanced this project and our experience working on it even more.”
The APHC is managed by the Massachusetts Health Officers Association (MHOA) and is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. As the program continues to engage students and advance health and health equity across the Commonwealth, the MHOA is using a large-scale evaluation plan developed by Greece, Elliott, and their evaluation team to inform future evaluations of this work. At BU, a doctorate of public health (DrPH) student will be leading and engaging in this ongoing evaluation work as part of their dissertation.