Los Angeles —Population health leader Heluna Health has launched the first research tool enabling California officials and community members to determine how well prepared their counties are for an infectious disease outbreak.
The Community Outbreak Preparedness Index (COPI), spotlights local-level strengths and gaps in areas including hospital surge capacity, nursing home staffing, insurance coverage, and access to primary care. It can also help community leaders make data-driven decisions on how to enhance readiness by investing public funds more effectively.
“Successfully addressing the next outbreak will take a holistic, community-wide approach,” says Blayne Cutler, MD, Ph.D., President and CEO of Heluna Health.
Slated to expand to include other states, COPI focuses first on California, the most populous state in the country, which also features diverse rural and urban counties.
Heluna Health has played an active role in outbreak response for many years, through its own programs in the communities it serves, and by working with partners throughout California in the areas of infectious disease prevention, control, and surveillance. COPI expands on that work by staffing an active research and evaluation team to develop novel data products and resources that support population health stakeholders.
Data integrated into COPI assesses county-level preparedness with measures in four critical domains: Healthcare System Preparedness, Public Health System Preparedness, Access to Health Insurance and Social Safety Net Services, and Community Factors. County leaders that follow COPI annually will be able to track their progress and enhance their capabilities to address key gaps in preparedness.
A Data Brief informed by the 2023 COPI covers the lack of affordable high-quality housing in California and related preparedness measures.
ABOUT HELUNA HEALTH:
For more than 50 years, Heluna Health has been providing direct service programs and support to hundreds of partner initiatives that use evidence-based strategies to improve population health outcomes. Our team works to strengthen health interventions and create systems change including more equitable access to primary care and nutrition services, expansion of disease prevention, and more. To learn more about Heluna Health, go to www.helunahealth.org.
