INDIANAPOLIS – The Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI plans to hire 300 contact tracers and 10 supervisors to track the spread of COVID-19 in Indianapolis.
The school is getting $10.5 million from the city for the effort.
Employees will work with the Marion County Public Health Department to find anyone who may have had close contact with a person who’s tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Obviously, Marion County is the largest county. They’re getting the largest number of cases. So our contact tracers will help their public health nurse investigators do the contact tracing for the county,” said Shandy Dearth, director of the undergraduate epidemiology program at the Fairbanks School of Public Health.
Some contract tracers will work remotely, while others will go into the field if someone doesn’t have a phone or speaks a different language.
“We need to make sure that we’re hiring people from the neighborhoods, who can speak the correct language, who can go out to their neighbors, and follow up on these cases as needed,” said Dearth.
