Successful Partnership Provides States with Social Media Campaigns Focused on COVID-19 Contact Tracing

With COVID-19 cases going down across the nation but new, troubling strains of the virus emerging, contact tracing is being deployed in combination with vaccines to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recognizing the importance of contact tracing to the pandemic response, the CDC Foundation in partnership with the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) launched the Community COVID Coalition nearly six months ago. To date, 22 states have joined this innovative public-private partnership designed to support state efforts to educate diverse communities about effective public health interventions for slowing the spread of COVID-19 with the initial focus on contact tracing.

The goal of this initiative is simple—make it as easy as possible for all states to access and run campaigns on their Facebook and Instagram pages to encourage more people to “Answer the Call” from public health contact tracers.

To make this happen, the coalition conducted research, message testing and development of a library of contact tracing social media assets in Spanish and English. Once developed, all states were invited to join the effort and gain free access to the social media resources and free ad credits and marketing assistance from Facebook. Joining this effort is as simple as identifying a lead point of contact overseeing social media for the state/public health department and sending an email to the coalition.

States and their health departments continue to be under incredible pressure to mount comprehensive strategies for stopping the spread of COVID-19 as surges in cases brought many hospitals to full capacity and far more deaths than we could fathom just months before. Since December, health departments have embarked upon a historic effort to vaccinate everyone in the country, prioritizing vulnerable populations and handling vaccines requiring extraordinary measures for transport, storage and use.

Given all that the public health system is dealing with, all efforts designed to lighten the load while providing valuable communications support are urgently needed. The Community COVID Coalition is one such effort, making it easy for states to access free, cutting edge communications about contact tracing including infographics, animations, statics and videos along with free ad credits and marketing assistance from Facebook, saving states time and money. This is of particular value to states lacking the funding and capacity needed to research and develop targeted social media behavior change communications campaigns.

When the idea for this initiative was developed, testing and contact tracing were front and center to the response everywhere, thus the project’s initial focus. Though contact tracing has lately been less prominent than other mitigation efforts and the vaccine rollout, contact tracing will always be a critical public health tool for stopping infectious diseases. With the new variant strains of SARS-CoV-2 circulating here in the United States, contact tracing is once again back in the headlines as the nation seeks a better understanding of the impact of these variant strains.

This one-stop shop model for helping states communicate with diverse and disproportionately affected communities is one the coalition hopes to expand to a wider array of COVID-19 mitigation and recovery efforts. Based on the coalition’s experience to date, states would welcome this critical communications support.