MSGH Students Collaborate with Clear Outcomes

MSGH students Will Hudson, Sarah Alummootil, Mackenzie Moore, Charlotte Follari and Natalie Fahsen Paeteau are collaborating with Dr. Kerry Bruce and her team at Clear Outcomes on two COVID-19 projects to track state resource information and Americans’ precautionary behavior during the outbreak.

The captured data presents a compelling landscape of public health information for every U.S. state: where contact tracing information exists, laboratories’ rapid testing capabilities and if FDA-approved antibody tests are available to the public.

In the absence of information on state health departments’ websites, news coverage of public health reports is cited to glean test result wait times, tracing efforts and antibody testing capacity. While their findings indicate tracing efforts are expanding, many official websites do not contain information.

Additionally, over a six week period in April and May 2020, three behavior safety surveys explored Americans’ response to local sheltering orders and social distancing guidelines. The results illuminate marked attentiveness to most disinfecting measures…and some fatigue. The findings will be shared with policy makers in efforts to improve pandemic response. Students helped with qualitative coding of the open ended comments and conducted sentiment analysis on the comments over time.

Dr. Bruce commented “We couldn’t have done this time sensitive work without the assistance of the MSGH students. It is gratifying to see them apply their public health skills in an applied and impactful manner.” Follow their work through the interactive maps that will be updated regularly in the dynamic, rapidly evolving COVID-19 environment.