This spring 2022 issue of NACCHO Exchange looks at the impact of COVID-19 on local programs and services, offering insights and lessons learned for practitioners across departments.

Featured articles in this issue include:

• The Effect of COVID-19 on Local Health Department Overdose Prevention and Response Activities
• Building Trust in Pandemic Times: How the Public Health Code of Ethics Can Help
• Advancing Hepatitis Prevention and Elimination in the Wake of a Pandemic
• Health Equity in a Pandemic
• COVID-19 Impact on U.S. Tuberculosis Programs: A National Tuberculosis Controller Association Survey
• Connecting Lancaster County Residents with COVID-19 Vaccine Information via a Traveling Educational Panel

Below is an excerpt from the issue’s opening.

As illustrated in NACCHO’s latest Forces of Change survey, COVID-19 had a profound impact on the provision of services by local health departments (LHDs). Stretched financial and staffing capacities hindered a robust response to COVID-19, forced suspensions of essential public health services, and exacerbated already existing health inequities. To reallocate capacity for the front line response, many local health departments were forced to suspend and alter public health services critical to keeping communities healthy and safe, including chronic disease and substance use disorder. As a result, epidemics like the overdose crisis quietly escalated during the pandemic.

A total of four in five local health departments (80%) reassigned staff from regular duties to support COVID-19 response, with Environmental Health and Maternal and Child Health programs being most impacted. Of local health departments providing certain foundational public health services, 75% reduced their provision of obesity prevention services, 65% reduced drug prevention services, and 60% reduced maternal and child health services.

This issue of NACCHO Exchange looks at the impact of COVID-19 on local programs and services, offering insights and lessons learned for practitioners across departments.

To read the full issue of NACCHO Exchange, click here.