Pandemic lessons influence future of public health

This is the last story in a five-part series examining the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the lives of area residents. Effects on students, education, athletes, local businesses and public health will be featured.

Lessons learned by community leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic are being put to use as the region prepares for the World Cup to come to Kansas City in 2026.

Local public health and emergency officials have developed another unified command for the World Cup to function as a planning group with a lot of the same stakeholders involved, said Robert Bieniecki, director of Douglas County Emergency Management.

Looking back over the past five years, the pandemic brought new challenges to the public health industry. It also brought many Douglas County leaders together to be better communicators and help better prepare for other emergency responses in the future.

Looking Back on the 2021 Vaccine Clinics

During the mass vaccination campaign at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, from Jan. 29 to April 28, 2021, Douglas County Public Health administered 55,149 COVID-19 vaccinations.

A model for a drive-thru style vaccine site was something Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health had tested out before for H1N1, and it was favorable for residents, said Charlie Bryan business systems and finance manager for Douglas County Public Health

By activating an emergency management plan, organizations in the county came together to work on a joint streamlined plan to move forward. 

Executive Director Jonathan Smith was not with public health when the pandemic started, but he’s seen the community coming together since then. 

Bryan was leading groups of hundreds of volunteers who helped make the mass vaccines possible, Smith said. 

Smith said it’s inspiring to see how the organization responded effectively and see dedication from so many. It was a hard time to be in public health in general, he said, and burnout due to COVID is still happening. 

The community has all kinds of different emergency response plans, whether for a public health emergency or other hazards. 

Shortly into the outbreak, Bryan said he talked to Emergency Management to plan for next steps. The departments needed to activate the part of the plan that identified professional volunteers who could help with vaccines and others who could help with the rest of operations. 

The Emergency Management Office helps handle volunteers in collaboration with United Way. A unified command was established with public health, emergency management, the county, city, LMH Health and KU.  

They gathered names of around 2,000 volunteers and had to check credentials to allow nurses and pharmacists to administer vaccines. The health department managed credentialed volunteers while Emergency Management organized non-vaccination volunteers. Staff from the health department were at each vaccine date, and the KU School of Pharmacy also partnered to help draw and prepare syringes. 

Any time the department deployed at the fairgrounds, which was the county’s biggest vaccine site, there were around 200 volunteers running the drive-thru, Bryan said. There were around 24 vaccine stations each time, but the plan was evolving continually while time went on. 

The fairgrounds was the primary location for vaccines for the first few months to get large numbers immediately. 

Misinformation is one of the biggest threats to public health that exists, Smith said. To help combat misinformation surrounding illness, the department tries to ensure all the information put out is evidence-based. 

Smith also wants the public to know if they have questions or are unsure, public health is always able to answer questions. Any information about guidance came directly from the department’s health officer at the time, Thomas Marcellino. 

The health department has also continued to track COVID, flu and others in wastewater.

Bryan said at the early onset of the pandemic, there was a public information team designed to specifically tackle getting accurate information to the public. 

As time progresses further away from the initial vaccination, many in Douglas County are still getting boosters. Smith said the number receiving them in Douglas County is not going down. He credits that to outreach events, such as bringing a vaccine mobile unit to organizations or events. 

Smooth said the mobile unit has come to Eudora and Baldwin City and is still available for request for a flu or covid clinic. 

“I think because of how we responded so well back when the pandemic first started, I think we became a trusted source for vaccinations, specifically with COVID,” Smith said. 

Bryan said public surveys were collected at the time of the pandemic to make sure public health was doing what it could to identify and break down potential barriers. The public made it clear that something like the drive-thru testing during H1N1 was something they had a strong preference for. It kept people away from one another and created a relatively outdoor environment. 

A New Standard for Emergency Response

Bieniecki of Douglas County Emergency Management said handling the emergency response to COVID was unprecedented. 

After every vaccination clinic, the leaders would conduct an action review to discuss what went well and what could be changed for better efficiency. 

When the clinic was at its most effective and when the vaccine became available in higher quantities, they were giving out 4,000 vaccines in a five- to six-hour period, Bieniecki said. 

The pandemic taught the emergency management office many lessons to be more prepared for things like COVID. One was to always have more personal protective equipment on hand for emergencies. It also enhanced relationships with management and leaders across the county. 

During the pandemic, city and county commissioners were trying to field questions about COVID. Sometimes if they felt the need to put something out themselves, it was not always a good outcome, he said. The joint information center can help give officials one source and one message to share, Bieniecki said. 

“Unfortunately, it takes emergencies to bring communities together. And I think Lawrence-Douglas County did an amazing job,” he said. “When we, as emergency managers, meet with our partners from adjacent counties, and when we talked about what we were doing compared to what they were doing, they wanted our model. We actually send our incident action plans to other jurisdictions so they can model what we did there.”

Managing Ever-Changing Information 

Karrey Britt, communications and media coordinator for the county, was involved in the joint information center to make sure all stakeholders were sharing the same information and combating misinformation surrounding the illness. 

One of the first steps to ensure people could get information was setting up a website that served as a COVID information hub in collaboration with other organizations as part of unified command. It offered information on cases in the county, social distancing, masking, vaccinations and all the other changing factors as they came. The hub was open from March 16, 2020, to April 13, 2022. 

One of the first COVID-related press releases was sent out March 13, 2020, canceling school for two weeks. Another followed March 23, saying Douglas County would host its first COVID press briefing with leaders from public health, LMH Health, Douglas County and Lawrence. 

Douglas County public information officers meet monthly to make sure they have a relationship so when emergencies like the pandemic happen, they’re able to send out timely and unified information. 

“We’re really about disseminating information on emergencies, you know, because that information can potentially be life-saving information,” Britt said. 

In February 2021, a hotline was also set up to answer questions about the vaccine process. 

Impacts on the Health-Care Industry

Stacey Dines is a nurse practitioner at the LMH Health Primary Care in Eudora. She’s seen the changes and new practices that came from the pandemic. 

Dines said the beginning of the shutdown felt unreal and shocking. 

“There wasn’t really fear. It’s what we do. So it didn’t really change my thought of work,” she said. 

COVID brought new testing methods to the health-care industry – like opportunities for over-the-counter testing and school site testing, she said. 

It’s also changed views around why masking is recommended. 

“I think the world, hopefully, has learned that whether it’s COVID, influenza, any kind of fever, the reason for the mask is not a fear. It’s respecting your peers, respecting people with immunocompromise and respecting elderly,” she said. 

When patients would come in with political views on COVID, as a health-care provider it’s important to educate people on the science behind the illness, its spread and put personal beliefs aside. 

“This is the virus you have. It is contagious. And, you know, we repeated that a lot. Most people were very receptive and respectful,” she said. 

Dines said at the start of vaccinations coming out, people were pretty receptive and she said the majority of people got it. As the five years have gone by, the boosters have started to decrease, but some are still getting their booster each year, she said. 

 

COVID also brought out changes for employees within health-care facilities. Testing and screening employees for illness was not something commonly done before the start of the pandemic. 

For some people, trust in health-care workers can now depend on political views and some of that distrust has been on bigger medical authorities. Dines said she is a believer in doing good for all her patients, and treating patients as if they’re her own family. 

One positive that came from the experience is the opportunity for patients to use telehealth if leaving the house is more challenging or a concern for health reasons.

Dines said she never thought of leaving her job as it was something she’d done for 25 years.. 

“I kind of figured, it’s our job. It’s not the time to run. It’s the time to step up, it’s our job,” she said. “I don’t know what else I would do.”

With every incident, the agencies learn how to work better together and handle these kinds of situations, Britt said. 

The unified command sent out its last message in March 2022, and its final release said the banding together of all these agencies helped save lives in the community, Britt said. 

“It affected every single person’s life and our community. I can’t think of anything else that has affected every single person in Douglas County, but this definitely did,” Britt said. “I hope it’s something I never experienced again in my life.”