Assessing an Innovative Community-based Response to COVID-19 in Rural North Carolina (2020-2021)

The “Partners for Pamlico” project team focused on Pamlico County, situated in rural, coastal North Carolina, and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team’s findings shed light on the challenges and health inequities faced by vulnerable populations in the United States during the pandemic, and how community engagement, as well as digital and reverse innovations helped address these challenges and inequities in one underserved NC community.

Team members established public-private community partnerships to analyze the COVID-19 pandemic response in Pamlico County. Students drew upon the wealth of skills and strengths within the county and at Duke’s Global Health Innovation Center to develop applied research projects that worked to promote innovative public health strategies.

Through partnerships with the county health department, a local free healthcare clinic, and a COVID-19 community task force (CCTF), grass-root expertise, engagement and evidence-based methods were used to launch or improve existing mechanisms and infrastructures to expand public education and community-driven health efforts. Digital and frugal innovations including telehealth, community health workers and emergency text-message response systems were introduced or researched to further develop a community-based response network and health engagement system.

Student team members conducted surveys, qualitative interviews, literature reviews and data analysis to provide and implement recommendations for community partnerships to improve chronic disease management, build community engagement to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and strengthen the capacity of the county’s health department to address health inequities. The team also created several posters and newsletters encouraging health behaviors and distributed them across Pamlico through the CCTF.