Tracking emergency response actions during COVID-19 leads to development of an innovative public health evaluation tool

• Published in: Canadian journal of public health Vol. 114; no. 5; pp. 737 - 744
• Main Authors: Biro, Suzanne, Scott, Karen, Nagy, Emma, Slipp, Nancy, Beck, Kinsey, Catley, Christina, Hart, Ezra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01-10-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Accessibility; Action; Contact tracing; COVID-19; Data collection; Emergency preparedness; Emergency response; Epidemiology; Health care management; Information; Integrated works software; Intervention; Jurisdiction; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Pandemics; Public Health; Qualitative analysis; Regional development; Special Section on COVID-19: Innovations in Policy and Practice; Tool setting; Canada; COVID-19; Qualitative research; Evaluation; évaluation; Data visualization; Santé publique; recherche qualitative; interventions non pharmaceutiques; visualisation de données; Public health; Non-pharmaceutical interventions
• ISSN: 0008-4263; 1920-7476
• DOI: 10.17269/s41997-023-00811-3

Setting
Early in the pandemic, KFL&A Public Health needed a way to capture, organize, and display COVID-19-related events to be accountable for and evaluate our actions.
Intervention
We used accessible software (Microsoft Office 365 suite, Microsoft PowerBI) to develop a data collection and visualization system. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) developed a timeline and categorization approach for provincial and national COVID-related interventions, which was used to develop a regional version for local events using similar categories. We collected and displayed qualitative data alongside epidemiological data that allowed users to display different timelines of actions and outcomes and evaluate our response.
Outcomes
In developing the timeline, we took stock of the information and data we wanted to collect, sort, and display locally. Next, we collected information on response actions, case and contact tracing, and staffing changes in a database that we displayed on a timeline. We included CIHI’s data set to provide insight into pandemic response across all jurisdictions.
Implications
Our timeline tool has many advantages for public health authorities beyond responding to a rapidly evolving emergency. By collecting information on events as they occur, decisions and actions are documented that may otherwise be overlooked. This enables decision-makers to visualize the impact of public health actions on health outcomes over time. The tool is completely customizable and scalable depending on the project scope and we plan to apply this method to other public health programming. Finally, we include lessons learned from quickly developing these tools in a real-time pandemic setting, both locally at KFL&A Public Health and nationally at CIHI.