“COVID-19 has heightened public awareness of the importance of public health in various settings and revealed critical opportunities to improve infection prevention and control,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, NACCHO’s Chief Executive Officer.

Washington, DC, October 30, 2020 —The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), representing the country’s nearly 3,000 local health departments, is proud to be a partner in CDC’s Project Firstline, a comprehensive infection control program designed to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases in U.S. healthcare settings.

Project Firstline is committed to preparing the public health workforce and frontline healthcare workers to protect themselves, their patients, and their communities from infectious disease threats. Infection prevention and control (IPC) describes a set of practices which aim to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases, including hand hygiene, personal protective equipment (PPE), and vaccination.

Local health departments are called upon to support IPC in various settings including traditional healthcare settings such as long-term care facilities, as well as congregate living settings such as correctional and adult living facilities. Local health departments often make recommendations for improving infection prevention after an outbreak occurs and, increasingly, seek out opportunities to work with facilities to proactively identify gaps in infection prevention and control practices to prevent outbreaks from occurring.

“COVID-19 has heightened public awareness of the importance of public health in various settings and revealed critical opportunities to improve infection prevention and control,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, NACCHO’s Chief Executive Officer. “Local health departments have demonstrated they are more than willing to meet this challenge head-on and it is important that they are provided with the training and resources to be successful in this role.”

CDC’s engagement of partners such as NACCHO and the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) demonstrates the important role of public health and local health departments in advancing infection prevention and control. NACCHO is proud to participate alongside NNPHI in Project Firstline’s coalition—which includes more than a dozen healthcare, public health, and academic partners, as well as 64 state, territorial, and local health departments—to support development and dissemination of an innovative, interactive infection control curriculum for healthcare and public health workforces across the United States.

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About NACCHO
The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) represents the nation’s nearly 3,000 local health departments. These city, county, metropolitan, district, and tribal departments work every day to protect and promote health and well-being for all people in their communities. For more information about NACCHO, please visit www.naccho.org