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Review
. 2024 Apr;30(13):S17-S20.
doi: 10.3201/eid3013.230777.

Lessons Learned from Public Health and State Prison Collaborations during COVID-19 Pandemic and Multifacility Tuberculosis Outbreak, Washington, USA

Sixtine O Gurrey, Lara B Strick, Lana K Dov, James S Miller, Monica Pecha, Randy M Stalter, David L Miller, Brandon Marshall, Alonso Pezo Salazar, Laura P Newman
Review

Lessons Learned from Public Health and State Prison Collaborations during COVID-19 Pandemic and Multifacility Tuberculosis Outbreak, Washington, USA

Sixtine O Gurrey et al. Emerg Infect Dis. 2024 Apr.

Abstract

The large COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons in the Washington (USA) State Department of Corrections (WADOC) system during 2020 highlighted the need for a new public health approach to prevent and control COVID-19 transmission in the system's 12 facilities. WADOC and the Washington State Department of Health (WADOH) responded by strengthening partnerships through dedicated corrections-focused public health staff, improving cross-agency outbreak response coordination, implementing and developing corrections-specific public health guidance, and establishing collaborative data systems. The preexisting partnerships and trust between WADOC and WADOH, strengthened during the COVID-19 response, laid the foundation for a collaborative response during late 2021 to the largest tuberculosis outbreak in Washington State in the past 20 years. We describe challenges of a multiagency collaboration during 2 outbreak responses, as well as approaches to address those challenges, and share lessons learned for future communicable disease outbreak responses in correctional settings.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS; SARS-CoV-2; United States; Washington; bacteria; coronavirus; coronavirus disease; correctional facilities; disease outbreaks; prisons; public health practice; respiratory infections; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; state government; tuberculosis; viruses; zoonoses.

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