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OMAHA, NE (WOWT) — If COVID-19 pressured you to quarantine, working errands most likely received an entire lot tougher.
Because the pandemic unfolded, the Douglas County Well being Division’s contact tracers tracked exposures and advised folks to isolate. A few of these households wanted assist getting meals or different companies, and that accountability fell on contact tracers. In June, the well being division’s Stephen Jackson gathered a staff devoted to serving to folks keep in isolation.
The well being division’s Well being Determinant Navigation Program needs to assist preserve quarantined folks at house by connecting them with social companies that companion with the division.
“The idea for a navigation program got here out of the necessity to relieve among the burden from the contact tracers,” Stephen Jackson mentioned, who’s the supervisor for well being promotion on the well being division.
Grocery runs, rental help, and psychological well being points have been hardly within the contact tracer’s job description. Once they contact somebody presumably uncovered to COVID-19, contact tracers will decide if a household or particular person is eligible for this type of help.
For many who had bother getting meals, the division linked folks to the non-profit Whispering Roots.
“Originally of the pandemic, we have been unable to do our regular programming, which is vitamin schooling, culinary schooling, agriculture—we needed to shut down as a result of we couldn’t go into our faculties,” mission supervisor Anna Curry mentioned.
Whispering roots had a van and sufficient folks to do the job: ship meals to houses of individuals in isolation. Some meals is freed from value, because of a USDA program.
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