NACCHO recognizes the West Hartford-Bloomfield Health District’s (WHBHD) Coalition Against Healthcare-Acquired Infections Team (CCAH) as its latest Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Champion. NACCHO’s IPC Champions are passionate, well versed, and respected leaders in the field of infection prevention and control. These individuals work at local health departments and advance infection prevention and control capacity, activities, guidelines, and engagement. A full list of West Hartford County CCAH members can be found at the bottom of this announcement.

The WHBHD is responsible for enforcement of environmental protection and public health law, infection prevention for diseases like measles and tuberculosis, health promotion and education, and community health surveillance. The health department provides a wide variety of services locally, including immunization clinics, communicable disease surveillance and follow-up, restaurant and pool inspections, lead and radon consultations, and more. Their work prior to COVID centered on providing community education, with subjects including fall prevention for older adults and vaccinations for all ages. When mortality rates rose in long-term care facilities during the pandemic, WHBHD focused on addressing the impact by building relationships through education, guidance, personal protective equipment (PPE), and Infection Control Assessment and Response (ICAR) assessments.

Forging and Sustaining Partnerships to Improve Resilience During Uncertain Times

As the pandemic began to emerge, the Connecticut Department of Public Health prioritized support for skilled-nursing facilities due to their greater vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the WHBHD team centered their efforts on providing support for assisted-living and independent-living facilities in their jurisdiction.

The WHBHD team began to conduct outreach to establish contacts with leadership at long-term care facilities in Spring 2020, and months later in the fall, began working together on the BLOC COVID project. Two years later during Spring 2022, the CCAH, or Coalition Against HAIs, was established by the WHBHD in collaboration with two other local health departments. This collaborative worked to educate local facilities about infectious disease outbreak prevention and address questions, concerns, or other educational needs. Its core mission was to reduce negative outcomes associated with COVID, HAIs, and microbial-resistant pathogens by reinforcing relationships between health departments, facilities, and community partners through its consistent emphasis on open and regular communication. To this day, the CCAH team continues to share resources and information in quarterly meetings for facilities in three jurisdictions representing twenty towns, and continually seeks opportunities to improve its communications and relationships with their community partners to address ongoing health needs.

CCAH credits consistent communication as an effective means to pronounce individual members’ strengths, identify opportunities to optimize teamwork, and facilitate new learning by staff members. Megan Westcott, epidemiologist at WHBHD and core member of the CCAH team, emphasizes:

“While our team did not work together prior to the start of the pandemic, working with high-risk facilities in infection control during a pandemic required us to lean in to and rely on each of our individual strengths. It is okay that we each do not know everything – this would be impossible! That’s why it is so important to come together as a team.”

Staff turnover and changes in leadership throughout the pandemic impeded effective cross-departmental communications and the provision of IPC training for facilities. However, the degree to which the WHBHD maintained regular communications and up-to-date contacts minimized the impact of these disruptions on IPC practices at these facilities. Furthermore, they would offer to provide in-person IPC training to facility staff to relieve the burden on administration, demonstrating their steeled determination to go above and beyond to fulfill community health needs and nurture partner relationships.

While ICAR tools are frequently used within facilities to assess IPC practices, the CCAH team transformed them into partnership-building tools as well. They used results to identify areas requiring greater support and responded accordingly with training resources and implementation, IPC recommendations, and IPC-related policy and plan revisions. The latter continues to be a major organizational priority to ensure preparedness for future outbreaks, public health emergencies, and natural disasters.

Reinforcing Community and Partner Trust Through Consistent Communication Beyond COVID

As the COVID pandemic waned in magnitude, the WHBHD team expanded their focus to include HAIs and infections with multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs). They also brought skilled-nursing facilities into the fold, providing them with IPC resources and support in addition to assisted-living and independent-living facilities.

The team’s efforts to improve COVID-related health outcomes through CCAH allowed for the forging of stronger interdepartmental relationships and increased collaboration among their jurisdiction’s facilities, the state’s HAI and Antibiotic Resistance program, and other local health departments in Connecticut. This allowed regular communication to become a cultural norm between the WHBHD team and their partners, making it easier for them to provide guidance and share health-related updates to inform timely healthcare responses beyond COVID. WHBHD continues operating as a central figure to provide support and educational resources to facilities about communicable diseases like COVID, such as gastrointestinal viruses, influenza, and other HAIs.

In sustaining their relationship with local facilities, WHBHD enhances their efforts to keep infectious disease outbreaks at bay by conducting surveillance to detect infections early on, optimizing PPE, sharing education and other resources, and providing support for the management of illnesses and infections at large. This includes infection control in in-service follow-up trainings to assisted local long-term care facilities. WHBHD also developed a shareable resource that simplifies IPC for facility and partner use and dissemination.

As they look towards the future, the WHBHD team’s advice to other local health departments coordinating team efforts is “to communicate openly and regularly – effective communication is the foundation to a great team, and to highlight each person’s strengths while allowing the time and space to hone new skills. And never give up – great things take time!”

West Hartford-Bloomfield Health District Team Members and Roles:

• Megan Westcott, MPH – Epidemiologist, Internship Coordinator
• Nancy Dupont, RN, BSN, MPH, CIC – Infection Preventionist
• Janice Gibson, RN – Public Health Nurse

Submit a Nomination Today

If these qualities feel familiar to you and you would like to submit an individual or team nomination for recognition as a NACCHO Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Champion, please use this form. A member of our team will reach out to you to get any additional information we might need.