Translating Federal COVID-19 policy
Ben Trump, Scott Greer and Holly Jarman
After weeks of tough physical distancing requirements curbed case counts in many countries, governments around the world have been figuring out how to transition to a way of life that allows more economic activity to take place without encouraging the spread of disease.
In terms of transition planning, one of the core governance problems facing the US stems from Federalism. Much of the US response is being organized at state level, with the potential for state governments to adopt very different approaches.
On April 16th, the White House and the CDC published ‘Opening Up America Again’, a set of transition guidelines focussed around multiple stages. But with states as the main strategic actors in managing the pandemic, this high level document needed to be translated into policy practice in ways that supported efforts among states and related NGO and industry stakeholders to use scientific data for making COVID-19-related decisions.
To address this problem, Lab contributors Ben Trump, Scott Greer and Holly Jarman worked to assist colleagues at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, the US Department of Health and Human Services and FEMA Region 1 in developing an analytic framework and process to facilitate government decision making throughout each stage of the pandemic.
Making decisions using the framework relies on three kinds of important information: data about the spread of disease, data about the overall health of the population and data about the capacity of important infrastructure such as public health and health systems.
This combination of data is vital. Governments have to understand not just how the disease is being transmitted, but also how the vulnerability of people to the worst outcomes from COVID-19 varies across their jurisdiction. Finally, governments must monitor the ability of their existing infrastructure -including testing, contact tracing and health systems capacity- to support the transition process.
By monitoring this data against key thresholds, and taking steps to move indicators towards those targets where necessary, governments can move to relax restrictions where possible, and reinstate restrictions when necessary. This flexibility will be vital in the coming months as re-opening creates challenges for maintaining progress in fighting the spread of disease.
