COVID-19 Detection and Mitigation in Confinement Facilities Training and Technical Assistance Informational Webinar

1

00:00:00 --> 00:00:10

Eric Trabert: Welcome to today's webinar introducing the COVID-19 Detection and Mitigation in Confinement Facilities Training and Technical Assistance Center.

2

00:00:11 --> 00:00:16

Eric Trabert: Which, as I say that, I know it’s a mouthful. We have started to use the acronym CDMCF.

3

00:00:17 --> 00:00:33

Eric Trabert: Which is not much better, but I'm hoping over time that becomes more familiar to each of you. My name is Eric Trabert. I serve as a managing director within CNA's Institute for Public Research. CNA is the TTA provider for this work.

4

00:00:34 --> 00:01:02

Eric Trabert: I'm also the project manager. I wanted to just take a moment at the outset here to thank each of you for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend today's session. I hope you'll find it useful, learn a little bit more about the project, and also share your experiences during the listening session with us on what your experience has been so far in terms of working on the issue of COVID detection and mitigation in confinement settings.

5

00:01:03 --> 00:01:05

Eric Trabert: I am going to share my screen.

6

00:01:06 --> 00:01:18

Eric Trabert: Okay. So before we jump into it, just a few housekeeping items for all of you. As I noted earlier today, this webinar is being recorded. But you probably just saw there are a couple of different invitations for webinars that came out.

7

00:01:19 --> 00:01:39

Eric Trabert: We're doing one today and one tomorrow at the same time, and then one next Monday. You do not need to attend each of those. A lot of the same content will be covered.

8

00:01:40 --> 00:01:53

Eric Trabert: But we wanted to give folks sufficient opportunity to attend and participate if they wanted. For those who can’t, we are recording, and we'll be providing the recording of the webinars, the transcript, and the slides from today. We’ll be posting those to BJA’s project page.

9

00:01:54 --> 00:02:00

Eric Trabert: As soon as I have the URL for that and the timeline for getting those posted, we will push that information out to each of you.

10

00:02:01 --> 00:02:19

Eric Trabert: For those who are interested. We have enabled the live captioning function as well. So if you want to use that, you can see on the bottom menu bar, there's a button for live captioning. You can click on that, and then either select show subtitle or view full transcript.

11

00:02:20 --> 00:02:33

Eric Trabert: Hopefully that should work. If you run into any problems, please just put a message in the chat and my colleague, Nandita Ravishankar, is monitoring the chat, and she can try and help troubleshoot if the need arises.

12

00:02:34 --> 00:02:51

Eric Trabert: Speaking of the chat, too, we encourage you to submit questions at any time during the presentation into the chat function, and then we will be monitoring those. We do have some time set aside after we work through the initial part of the presentation for Q and A. So we'll be reserving those questions until that time.

13

00:02:52 --> 00:02:57

Eric Trabert: Please don't hesitate if something pops in your head to put it in the chat and we will bring it up during the Q and A part.

14

00:02:58 --> 00:03:13

Eric Trabert: Lastly, we do want to get your feedback on today's webinar. This is for us just a process of continuous improvement. So we'd love to get your thoughts on how this went. Was the information relevant for you? Was it useful?

15

00:03:14 --> 00:03:27

Eric Trabert: We also have some questions in the feedback forum about potential topics you would like to see covered in future webinars, so we'll be putting a link in the chat as well for the feedback form.

16

00:03:28 --> 00:03:40

Eric Trabert: I encourage you to please fill that out and submit it back to us. I will provide a website where you can send that. We'll also be pushing out the link for that feedback form and a follow-up email to you as well.

17

00:03:41 --> 00:03:53

Eric Trabert: So here's our agenda for today. We've structured the webinar really in half. We're going to spend the first half of the time by just giving you a brief overview of the project.

18

00:03:54 --> 00:04:06

Eric Trabert: I know many folks on this call are already familiar with a lot of what we're going to talk about on the call, but we also wanted to introduce our team, which I think many of you may not be as familiar with.

19

00:04:07 --> 00:04:11

Eric Trabert: So who the CNA team is and how we can support you.

20

00:04:12 --> 00:04:37

Eric Trabert: We're then going to address the types of TTA that's available to you, the recipients, and to your subrecipients in the field at large under this TTA center, and talk to you about how to access TTA. So how to request TTA in our model for meeting your TTA needs. So how we're going to engage with you and provide support to you throughout the project period.

21

00:04:38 --> 00:04:52

Eric Trabert: We're real fortunate today to have Sara Sullivan joining us. Sara is the Senior Policy Advisor within the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is in the Office of Justice Programs at the US Department of Justice. And Sara is the government lead point of contact for this contract.

22

00:04:53 --> 00:04:57

Eric Trabert: So Sara, I'm going to turn it over to you for some opening remarks.

23

00:04:58 --> 00:04:59

Sara Sullivan: Great! Thanks so much. Eric.

24

00:05:00 --> 00:05:44

Sara Sullivan: First, I want to thank everybody for joining today. BJA and CDC entered into this partnership last year in order to jointly assist both recipients and the confinement facilities in order to help detection and mitigation of COVID-19 in those confinement facilities. And so we're really excited to introduce you to the CNA team that will be providing technical assistance as part of this award. CNA, one of the reasons they were selected is because they have vast expertise both in criminal justice and corrections and also in the public health space and emergency preparedness.

25

00:05:45 --> 00:06:17

Sara Sullivan: CNA has done a lot of work with COVID-19 as well as other infectious diseases, and they'll talk more about what their experience is. But bringing that experience on both sides is going to be really valuable expertise that they have to bring to this project. There's a lot of technical assistance that will be provided. Eric and [the] team will go through that later in the webinar, and [are] really excited to be able to get that technical assistance out to you all.

26

00:06:18 --> 00:07:16

Sara Sullivan: I do want to acknowledge—you know, we understand this is 2½, almost 3 years, into the pandemic and a year into the funding. But we also know there are still needs out in the field, based in our conversations with you all, based on our conversations with the corrections community. So we also know that there's still a need to take some time, as Eric mentioned, to reflect and identify lessons learned to assist with future planning and discussions around how to make the good changes that have been made, how to ensure those are sustainable going forward. So I've spoken with many of you over the past year to provide some assistance already. I believe a few of you were at the webinars that we held in June and September, but I’m really excited to now kick off this part of the project where CNA can really provide a comprehensive set of training and technical assistance to you all.

27

00:07:17 --> 00:07:21

Sara Sullivan: So with that, I’ll let Eric and the team take it away. Thanks for joining.

28

00:07:22 --> 00:07:33

Eric Trabert: Okay. So let's start with a quick overview of the project. Like I said, you are familiar with this, but I wanted to sort of set a baseline here.

29

00:07:34 --> 00:08:19

Eric Trabert: This funding was authorized under the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 in which the funding was made available through CDC's ELC cooperative agreement to support… with the explicit intent of supporting COVID-19 protection and mitigation in confinement facilities. The goal of this funding is really to work with jurisdictional health departments and their directional counterparts to establish and implement COVID-19 detection and mitigation strategies in confinement facilities, and to do it in a way that is consistent with criminal justice standards and best practices, and the funding went to each of the 64 recipients. A total of $700 million was made available.

30

00:08:20 --> 00:08:38

Eric Trabert: The allocation of that funding was based on a formula that looked at the incarcerated population of each of the jurisdictions, divided into the national incarcerated population. The 64 recipients represent all 50 states, six localities, and U.S. territories and freely associated states.

31

00:08:39 --> 00:08:56

Eric Trabert: ELC recipients can choose to enter into agreements with other state entities to distribute the funds for the purposes of COVID-19 detention and mitigation, and the project period runs through the end of July 2024.

32

00:08:57 --> 00:09:20

Eric Trabert: This graphic just gives you a quick snapshot of the amount of funding that's been obligated across the recipients, as reported in the, I think this is data taken from the fourth quarter reports. So, I know you just closed the fifth quarter, and we'll look to update that. But I thought it was interesting just to get a little snapshot of how the funding's been obligated up to this point.

33

00:09:21 --> 00:09:47

Eric Trabert: If you look at this as a clock, and move around clockwise, that's 30 percent or 19 of the recipients have yet to obligate any of the funding received at this point. Another 22 – almost 23 percent obligated just 1 to 25 percent. So that's over 50 percent of recipients have reported at least obligating anywhere between 0 and 25 percent of the funds.

34

00:09:48 --> 00:10:02

Eric Trabert: So one of the ways I interpret this, as Sara was mentioning, is that there's still a good opportunity for us to work with each of you on your plans and strategies for obligating the funding and then implementing those strategies throughout the project period.

35

00:10:03 --> 00:10:31

Eric Trabert: The next slide here just shows an overview, or breakdown, of how recipients have, at least in their work plans, how they were going to divvy up the funds over the different strategies or the different activities that were allowable under the cooperative agreement. So if you remember, there are fifteen15 activities allowable under the cooperative agreement. The first one at the top there was required of all recipients. That was establishing and implementing a diagnostic and screening testing program.

36

00:10:32 --> 00:10:34

Eric Trabert: The remaining 14 activities were optional.

37

00:10:35 --> 00:10:50

Eric Trabert: You can see here a breakdown of how recipients were planning to use their funds. So for ongoing testing and contact tracing, almost 60 percent reported using funding for that purpose or as part of their funding for that purpose.

38

00:10:51 --> 00:11:53

Eric Trabert: Forty percent, a little more, 40 percent for practices to improve isolation and quarantine. Then you see a smattering, really a clustering, of anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of recipients doing various activities related to staffing strategies, how to mitigate risk to staff based on certain strategies for staffing out correctional facilities, visitor policies, and also just strengthening preparedness and response systems. Then down at the bottom there, you notice there was an activity related to population reduction and diversion. That's the only one that kind of stood out to me. There's five percent of recipients, just three recipients, that were going to use a portion of their funding for that particular activity. It doesn't mean that they're not using other sources of funding certainly to address that. But as far as this particular funding source was concerned, just five percent here of the funding has been used for that purpose.

39

00:11:54 --> 00:12:12

 so that was a quick overview I know, again, a lot of you have seen that before, but a quick overview of the program. Now I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce our team, because I know you're not quite as familiar with that. I know that there's some people on this call I saw who I have had the pleasure of speaking with already and others that I haven’t.

40

00:12:13 --> 00:12:36

Eric Trabert: I want to introduce you to CNA as an organization. So as Sara said, BJA contracted with CNA to serve as the TTA provider. CNA is a nonprofit research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia, and have been around since 1942. So we just celebrated this year our 80th anniversary as an organization.

41

00:12:37 --> 00:12:53

Eric Trabert: Our mission is pretty straightforward. We want to use scientific research and analysis to help government agencies operate more efficiently and to help leaders make better-informed decisions. So the work we do is all in the public interest, and we work with government entities at the federal, state, and local levels.

42

00:12:54 --> 00:13:20

Eric Trabert: As Sara mentioned, in CNA's Institute for Public Research, we have a number of centers of expertise where we work. Three of those centers are really relevant to this particular project. So, we have a center for Justice Research and Innovation, we have the Center for Public Health Preparedness and Resilience, and we have a center dedicated to doing work in Vulnerable Population Protection.

43

00:13:21 --> 00:13:30

Eric Trabert: I've been with CNA for about 20 years. It'll be my 20th anniversary next year, and I run our Center for Public Health Preparedness and Resilience.

44

00:13:31 --> 00:13:48

Eric Trabert: My background and training is as an epidemiologist, and I've spent pretty much my entire career at CNA working with public health agencies at all levels of government to prepare for and respond and recover from disasters and emergencies just like the COVID-19 pandemic.

45

00:13:49 --> 00:14:35

Eric Trabert: In fact, during COVID-19, I spent a lot of time working with these agencies to develop lessons-learned reports and after-action reviews. We've also had a number of our staff working onsite, providing augmentation support to public health entities to help during the response with everything from setting up testing programs and vaccination programs to supporting risk messaging and healthcare surge planning. So we've done a lot during the pandemic. We've seen a lot of this, and in particular, my experiences are not just limited to COIVD. Since I've been at it for 20 years, I've been intimately involved in our work around the H1N1 pandemic, the Ebola outbreak, and SARS.

46

00:14:36 --> 00:14:50

Eric Trabert: I think right after I joined CNA, we were doing work with the Department of Health and Human Services on the response to the initial SARS, and so I have exposure to that as well.

47

00:14:51 --> 00:15:02

Eric Trabert: Of importance for this type of work, CNA does run several national-level training and technical assistance programs, both for BJA and for the Department of Health and Human Services.

48

00:15:03 --> 00:15:22

Eric Trabert: My deputy director on this project is Tammy Felix. She's a senior research scientist within our Center for Justice Research and Innovation. Tammy, if you're able, I'm just going to allow you to take a minute or two just to introduce yourself and your involvement with some of the national TTA programs.

49

00:15:23 --> 00:16:01

Tammy Felix: Sure thing. Thanks, Eric. Hello everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Tammy Felix. I’m a senior research scientist with CNA’s Center for Justice Research and Innovation. I've been with CNA for 18 years now, a little over 18 years, and in that time, I've had the opportunity to work on a number of training and technical assistance programs sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs. I worked on BJA's Body-Worn Camera Implementation Program. I've also worked on their Public Safety Partnership program and also a number of initiatives with the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services around gathering and sharing best practices with justice agencies.

50

00:16:02 --> 00:16:55

Tammy Felix: About two or three years ago, we worked with the COPS Office to develop a number of recommendations around advancing 21^st-century policing. So I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of state and local law enforcement agencies through that program to kind of share best practices and promising approaches to carrying approaches into the 21st century. Currently, I'm also working with the National Institute of Corrections on a national-level study to understand the impact of COVID-19 on confinement facilities and also community corrections providers and impacts on the operations across both of those areas. And I'm very much looking forward to working on your project and providing assistance to help you achieve your program goals. So thank you and [I] look forward to meeting you all in person.

51

00:16:56 --> 00:17:08

Eric Trabert: Thanks, Tammy. Tammy is also going to serve as our lead TTA coordinator. So as we start to build out the provision of TTA support that will be coordinated at the center.

52

00:17:09 --> 00:17:24

Eric Trabert: Tammy talked a lot about our work. We have a national-level TTA at the Bureau of Justice Assistance. We also for the past decade we have run a national-level TTA program for HHS within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

53

00:17:25 --> 00:17:40

Eric Trabert: That's called the National Background Check Program. That's designed to work with states on implementing the best practices to ensure the safety of residents of long-term care facilities by, I think, background checks of those that work in those facilities.

54

00:17:41 --> 00:18:07

Eric Trabert: We have a lot of experience with this type of work and [are] really looking forward to kind of blending our public health expertise with our work in the justice space and working with all of the vulnerable population space for this [in] particular project. But we certainly can't do it alone. We brought some really strong partners to support us in this effort, and I wanted to talk about each of them briefly.

55

00:18:08 --> 00:18:37

Eric Trabert: So the American Correctional Association (ACA) is one of our partners. That's the nation's largest and oldest association that's dedicated to supporting the practitioners in the field of corrections. So they maintain tremendous expertise in correctional operations and health care. They also are very knowledgeable about how to build multidisciplinary coalitions to champion both effective policy but also practices both in prisons and in jails.

56

00:18:38 --> 00:19:43

Eric Trabert: What's going to be valuable for us, and in this particular work, is again, they maintain a very extensive network of subject-matter experts that we're going to be able to draw on as needed to support your TTA needs. So if there's something specific that we can't necessarily cover within our core team, we have a very deep network of subject-matter experts that we can draw upon to help support that. We also have bought on board as a partner in this effort the American Jail Association. So they represent over 2,500 member jails all across the country, do a lot of work facilitating peer learning among jail administrators, and like ACA, have a very deep and extensive network of subject-matter experts familiar with the jail system and the jail population that we can draw upon as needed to support our training and technical assistance needs. Lastly, another partner of ours on this is the Correctional Leadership Association, which represents correctional administrators from all states and U.S. territories.

57

00:19:44 --> 00:20:20

Eric Trabert: Like the American Jail Association and the ACA, they also maintain a large network of SMEs we’ll be able to draw upon to provide a great insight into issues like behavioral health programs, planning and training, and staffing within the correctional field. So we feel really fortunate to have at least three team members as part of our unit, and I hope this gives you confidence that we really have a lot of the expertise that's going to be needed to work with you in establishing and implementing your strategies and goals for using this funding.

58

00:20:21 --> 00:20:33

Eric Trabert: So let's talk a little bit about the type of TTA support that's going to be available. I know many of you working in the public health space are probably familiar with training or technical assistance.

59

00:20:34 --> 00:20:42

Eric Trabert: We have what I would consider a very comprehensive suite of services that will be able to provide through that COVID detection and mitigation TTA center.

60

00:20:43 --> 00:20:50

Eric Trabert: It all starts with working with each of you one-on-one to do some customized action planning.

61

00:20:51 --> 00:21:40

Eric Trabert: We're about to hit the ground running. We're going to put in the chat a link to some Doodle polls to start scheduling some one-on-one engagements with each of you where we can connect and better understand your vision and your workplan for using this funding. And talk to you a little bit about any gaps or issues or challenges that you've been facing and do a needs assessment with you and also a capacity assessment. And from that knowledge that we get from working with you, to develop a really customized action plan that will then be able to work with you throughout the project period to see that to fruition. So that's where it all starts for us.

62

00:21:41 --> 00:22:11

Eric Trabert: I think we're going to start kicking off the one-on-one engagements probably the first of the month of December. So just after the Thanksgiving holiday, and again, look in the chat for a link to a Doodle poll. If we don’t get it up there in the chat—I don’t see it right now—but if we don't get up in the chat, we’ll send it out after today's webinar, and you can also reach out to us through an email that we've set up. I will discuss that on the next slide.

63

00:22:12 --> 00:22:50

Eric Trabert: In addition to the custom action planning, we can also work with you around things like providing guidance on how to use available funding. That's not just guidance on what's allowed but also guidance from what we're seeing from other recipients and what they're doing with funding that we think might be applicable to you, based on what you've identified as your priorities. So kind of setting up that level of peer-to-peer engagement. That dovetails nicely into that third bullet, which is a big part of this TTA support—connecting peers with one another to collaborate and to learn from what each other's doing.

64

00:22:51 --> 00:23:24

Eric Trabert: We can do that in a number of ways. We can either identify a peer that's working on an issue similar to you and connect you to them directly. We can also host some learning environments where we can bring a group of folks together to discuss an issue, to learn from one another about practices that seem to be working well, so that each of you isn’t on your own trying to figure this out. So we do peer-to-peer collaboration. That's really fundamental and essential to the work that we do under the center.

65

00:23:25 --> 00:23:57

Eric Trabert: We will be hosting webinars like we're doing today to highlight things like best practices and lessons learned and also to discuss other aspects of program implementation. We'll be using other mechanisms too to get that type of information out to you. So, working to develop things like fact sheets and frequently asked questions and doing workshops or focus groups to learn from what's going on in the field essentially and figure out how we can best support your needs and get you to where you want to be.

66

00:23:58 --> 00:24:26

Eric Trabert: On the training side, there is training available. So everything from curriculum development to actually going out and delivering training onsite if you need it. We have experts in doing training in correctional facilities as well as confinement facilities, and we can also develop train-the-trainer programs so that we can leave behind the ability for your subrecipient to be able to go in and do that training at scale.

67

00:24:27 --> 000:25:15

Eric Trabert: We'll be developing a host of different tools in guidance and resources through the TTA center, and not just developing those but also providing you with access to updated guidance and tools that's being produced, you know, external to this particular program, but that folks may want access to. And we are in the process right now of building out a project website, which will serve as a clearinghouse for all this type of information and resources and really is going to be designed to be a one-stop shop for you to go to. If you're looking for something that you can easily find, that, you know, guidance being a toolkit or a checklist or something like that.

68

00:25:16 --> 00:25:22

Eric Trabert: Another big area where we see us providing support to you is in developing and tracking performance measures.

69

00:25:23 --> 00:25:46

Eric Trabert: We want to be able to work with you to highlight the impact that your activities are having out in the field. To make sure that we know what's working and what's maybe not working so that there's an opportunity to course correct where needed or an opportunity to really spot practices that seem to be working well so we can get that information, as I said earlier, out to the broader field.

70

00:25:47 --> 00:25:51

Eric Trabert: I'm going to talk a little bit about the performance measures on the next slide too because we think that’s really important.

71

00:25:52 --> 00:26:22

Eric Trabert: Then lastly, as I mentioned earlier, we have a really strong team with a deep bench of subject-matter experts in a variety of different areas. So it's everything from correctional operations to health care, training, and administration. Even, as we talked about earlier, public health, epidemiology, and infectious disease. So we want to make sure that you have access to these SMEs to help you in any way you might need them or that your subrecipients might need them.

72

00:26:23 --> 00:26:29

Eric Trabert: As I mentioned just a little bit ago, I wanted to drill down a bit on the area of performance measurement, as I talked about earlier.

73

00:26:30 --> 00: 27:09

Eric Trabert: You know, the action planning process that we're about to embark on with each of you will serve as a really good opportunity to work with you, to develop relevant metrics, to look at what activities you’re doing, the impact they're having, and a way to continuously improve and collect data so that we're continuously improving. So we do that as a process and then step in where we can help. If you're struggling or if you just want some extra guidance on some relevant metrics to look at, that’s an opportunity for us to work with you.

74

00:27:10 --> 00:27:25

Eric Trabert: We can also work with you just on collecting and reporting data for the requirements of the cooperative agreement. So, we know that there is quarterly reporting that's going on, looking at progress being made against each of the milestones that you all identified as part of the activities.

75

00:27:26 --> 00:27:31

Eric Trabert: We can work with you to collect and analyze and report that data, and we are happy to do that.

76

00:27:32 --> 00:27:44

Eric Trabert: So that CDC and BJA have an accurate picture of what's going on with the funding, and what level of progress is being made. We can also identify through that where there might be issues or challenges that we need to put some extra attention to.

77

00:27:45 --> 00:28:16

Eric Trabert: Lastly, one of the things that we're excited about is the opportunity to look across the 64 recipients and aggregate data. To look at that data to see what trends we're noticing and any kind of impacts that this funding is having on the field at large. To identify gaps in data. So where are there gaps? Where are we having trouble not getting the data we need to understand the impact that the activities are having on the population?

78

00:28:17 --> 00: 29:01

Eric Trabert: Also to help establish an evidence basis for the best practices or promising practices. So, moving beyond the anecdotal of this has worked really well for us to. You know, we've implemented this practice, it's reduced transmission in our facility by a certain amount, and we have data here on why we think this is a good practice. So a couple of different levels here on the performance measurement that I wanted to talk about and get across, everything through at an individual level to then taking the broader picture of what's happening in the field, based on data we’re collecting in partnership with you for this program.

79

00:29:02 --> 00:29:09

Eric Trabert: So now we get to the point of how you access the TTA. I've talked a little bit about what TTA is available and what we're here to support you with.

80

00:29:10 --> 00:29:52

Eric Trabert: But how do you access that? Well, the first way, which I’ve talked about, is we'll be coming out and doing outreach to each of you to support the development of the COVID needs assessment. So working with you to understand what you've identified as needs within your jurisdiction or what are your subrecipients need. We’ll also look at the relationships you're developing with your subrecipients and with confinement facilities in your jurisdictions. What are some ongoing challenges and mitigation strategies? Then we’ll use that to develop that customized action plan to identify where we think TTA will be the most valuable to you.

81

00:29:53 --> 00:30:04

Eric Trabert: And again, kind of look at it temporally. So maybe there are certain things that we want to focus on in the near term and maybe there are some longer term TTA needs that will be ongoing.

82

00:30:05 --> 00:30:11

Eric Trabert: So that's one way to access TTA, just through those one-on-one engagements and talking with us.

83

00:30:12 --> 00:30:20

Eric Trabert: The other way is that we encourage you to reach out to us at any time with requests for TTA. So you can do that. Your subrecipients can do that.

84

00:30:21 --> 00:30:33

Eric Trabert: You see there, we've established an email address. It's just [email protected].

85

00:30:34 --> 00:30:51

Eric Trabert: Any time you have a question or a request for some support, feel free to email us. We monitor that email every day and we’ll get right back to you if you need some additional information or if we want to set up a call to kind of flesh out what it is that you're looking for.

86

00:30:52 --> 00:31:27

Eric Trabert: That's going to be the primary mechanism right now for you to submit requests to us. But as I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of developing a website. And in addition to that being a clearinghouse for information, there will also be functionality in that website for you to go on, log in, and submit requests for TTA support. We'll be able to track all of that information and data. And so, as soon as that website is up and running, we will be sharing that information with you obviously as well. So that's another avenue for you to use to request TTA as well.

87

00:31:28 --> 00:32:01

Eric Trabert: As those requests come in, Tammy, who I mentioned earlier, will be our lead TTA coordinator, will be reviewing those requests in coordination with BJA and CDC. Looking at, is this within the scope of the cooperative agreement? Is this is an appropriate fit for the center? If not, what might be other avenues for you to pursue to get answers to these questions or to get the support that you need? But then also developing what's the recommended way that we think this request for TTA could be met.

88

00:32:02 --> 00:32:19

Eric Trabert: Once we go through that process, we'll then assign you a TTA coach and an analyst team to help work with you to meet those needs. I'm going to talk a bit more about this concept and model of TTA coach and analyst.

89

00:32:20 --> 00:32:34

Eric Trabert: Before I do that, though, I did want to note that this isn't a one-size-fits-all type of thing. I understand that not all TTA requests are going to look alike, not all are going to require the same type of engagement between ourselves and you all or your subrecipients.

90

00:32:35 --> 00:32:40

Eric Trabert: So we've identified here just a couple of different levels by which we anticipate being able to offer you support.

91

00:32:41 --> 00:33:04

Eric Trabert: The first is just more informational TTA response, and this can be kind of a one-off question where you’re looking for a resource or you want some more information about a certain thing. Maybe it's a wastewater surveillance or maybe it's ventilation systems in the facilities. We can help answer that type of a request for you.

92

00:33:05 --> 00:33:13

Eric Trabert: It could be a quick call. It could be an email. But these are pretty short engagements could also be just connecting you with another peer site.

93

00:33:14 --> 00:34:28

Eric Trabert: You might have some needs that are a bit more, I'd say, intense than that. But still relatively short term in duration. So as I noted before, we have the ability to develop some training curriculum and training programs for you. If you want to help train your staff around appropriate distancing policies or appropriate infection control, we can develop those types of trainings, and this is more of an example of a short-term TTA response. So in that situation, we'll work with you, maybe, over the course of a couple of days or a couple of weeks to develop that, and we might go out onsite to meet with you to deliver that or do it virtually. It's a relatively confined request. But the engagement may just be a bit longer. Then there's what we would consider more comprehensive TTA. So that might be a long-term, ongoing thing where we're working with your subrecipients or with you on a particular issue over a series of weeks or months, where we're looking at kind of a big issue that we're trying to tackle that you've identified, and it doesn't really fit into either of those other two pockets and it requires more of an ongoing engagement.

94

00:34:29 --> 00:34:46

Eric Trabert: I just wanted to get across with this slide the fact that we view TTA support as really something that's tailored to what you need. It's not going to be the same. It really is going to be dependent on what you’re looking for.

95

00:34:47 --> 00: 35:05

Eric Trabert: So I talked a little bit earlier about this idea of a TTA team and a coach with analysts and subject-matter experts, and I just wanted to come back to that a little bit and highlight it. So this is our model for delivering TTA and working with you and subrecipients in the field on this matter.

96

00:35:06 --> 00: 35:51

Eric Trabert: So we have identified four TTA coaches. We looked at the 15 activities that were allowable under the cooperative agreement. We grouped those activities into a couple of different categories and assigned a TTA coach for those. We are really fortunate. I talked earlier about our partners. We're really fortunate to have access to some of the national leaders in this area. People who have spent their whole life doing health care and public health work in correctional settings, who really understand that environment and confinement facility environment. So those folks are going to be our TTA coaches. We've identified four people to serve in that role. I've highlighted here on this slide.

97

00:35:52 --> 00:36:00

Eric Trabert: Dr. Jennifer Clark, who is a physician and former medical director for Rhode Island Department of Corrections, and she's going to fill the role of our correctional health SME.

98

00:36:01 --> 00:36:14

Eric Trabert: Dr. Kathleen Maurer is a physician and a public health professional that's spent her career delivering a lot of training and technical assistance work in correctional settings. So she will fill a correctional training role.

99

00:36:15 --> 00:36:30

Eric Trabert: Bob Lampert is a licensed attorney, and he's a former director for the Wyoming Department of Corrections, and he really understands the operational aspect of corrections and confinement facilities.

100

00:36:31 --> 00:36:42

Eric Trabert: Wendy Kelly is also a former deputy attorney general and secretary of the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Her focus, at least initially, is population diversion and reduction.

101

00:36:43 --> 00:36:51

Eric Trabert: Now the one thing that's nice about these folks, they're all cross-trained and can help out in any of these different areas.

102

00:36:52 --> 00:37:09

Eric Trabert: There's not a huge demand for support on the population diversion and reduction side. One, we can work with you to see if there might be more support there than we originally thought. Two, use Wendy's expertise in other aspects, for COVID detection and mitigation.

103

00:37:10 --> 00:37:57

Eric Trabert: With each of these TTA coaches, we're going to assign a team of at least two analysts. The way we do this is we partner an analyst from our Justice Research and Innovation Center, someone who has a lot of experience working in the field of criminal justice and corrections, with an analyst that comes from our public health center, someone that is trained in public health, oftentimes is trained as an epidemiologist or has an infectious disease background. So there is that aspect of it, and we think kind of merging that expertise together will really help strengthen the core of the team because we can look at issues from various perspectives.

104

00:37:58 --> 00:38:04

Eric Trabert: Then add, as needed, access to subject-matter experts that I identified before.

105

00:38:05 à 00:38:45

Eric Trabert: So if there’s a particular issue where we need to draw in someone that really understands that area, we’ll tap those subject matter experts in that regard. So what we'll be doing for each of these TTA teams is assigning a TTA team to each of the ELC recipients. That will be a team that works with them, not only for this original outreach and sort of needs assessment and not only if you submit a particular request for TTA. But our plan would be to have just kind of ongoing engagement with you to see how things are going; to see if anything's changed in your work plan, your priorities; if you're struggling and something's popped up that you're struggling with.

106

00:38:46 --> 00:38:52

Eric Trabert: So we want this to be more of an ongoing, continuous engagement between these TTA teams and yourselves.

107

00:38:53 --> 00:38:58

Eric Trabert: But just to recap a little bit, I talked about some of the resources available. I just wanted to close with kind of a refresher.

108

00:38:59 --> 00:39:17

Eric Trabert: I mentioned the email address earlier. You're going to see it again on the next slide. I encourage you, anytime you have a question or you have a request for something, please send us an email. We'll be responsive and get you the information you need, or at least point you in the right direction for that.

109

00:39:18 --> 00:39:35

Eric Trabert: I just wanted to kind of foot stomp that peer-to-peer collaboration element of our TTA. We think it's so important to have peers that are working on these issues in the field working collaboratively so that they can share information or good practices and really help to strengthen capacity in the field.

110

00:39:36 --> 00:39:51

Eric Trabert: I mentioned earlier, we're in the process now finalizing some fact sheets, frequently asked questions that should be helpful to you to answer some baseline questions you might have around the purpose of the program, what's allowable, that sort of thing.

111

00:39:52 --> 00:40:17

Eric Trabert: Also, we'll be developing best practices and lessons learned reports. But also, I would say, products that are more implementable in the field, so they may be things like case studies. We see something that seems like a really good practice, we might do a case study on that—a short case study—and put it out to you all so that you can reference that. And then the information and updates I talked about earlier on the website.

112

00:40:18 --> 00:40:40

Eric Trabert: We'll be maintaining just what we think is the most relevant information, not just for you all but for the subrecipients to go to you and access. We want to be doing frequent webinars or podcasts as a way to disseminate information and actually spark conversation between folks.

113

00:40:41 --> 00:40:55

Eric Trabert: Then, lastly, the website, which I discussed. So those are some of the resources we're currently building or have already established, and other’s that, we hope to get up and running in the next couple of weeks or months.

114

00:40:56 --> 00:41:16

Eric Trabert: Okay, so I have talked a little bit. I wanted to reserve some spare time here for any questions that you might have for myself for Sara or other members of our team. Again, I just put the website… the email, excuse me, that you can use to access. So it's not just for these questions but for any questions that you have going forward.

115

00:41:17 --> 00:41:23

Sara Sullivan: Eric, there is a question that was put in the chat to me. But before we get to that, just something I wanted to note.

116

00:41:24 --> 00:41:51

Sara Sullivan: It could be that you don't have technical assistance needs that you've identified, but you've identified that there are confinement facilities in your jurisdiction that could benefit from some technical assistance from CNA. You can either go ahead and submit that request on behalf of that facility or the facility themselves can submit that request—either way.

117

00:41:52 --> 00:42:33

Sara Sullivan: It doesn't need to be a facility that's receiving funding from you. So, CNA’s task and charge is to provide technical assistance to recipients, to subrecipients, and to the corrections field at large. So if you know or are aware of a facility in your jurisdiction that needs assistance, even if they are not receiving funding under this award, they're still eligible to receive technical assistance. And still feel free to either yourselves or have the facilities submit that request. So that's one thing I wanted to note.

118

00:42:34 --> 00:42:53

Sara Sullivan: So to the question. The question is, if we don't have a technical assistance request but we have a quick question either about the funding or about CDC guidelines, would we still use the same email address? Or for quick questions like that, is there somebody else we should reach out to?

119

00:42:54 --> 00:43:19

Eric Trabert: I'll answer that. For our purposes, I would say, use the email address. I said we're monitoring it every day. It's an easy way to make sure that we have a comprehensive picture of what types of questions are coming in. I'm afraid if they go to an individual person, we sort of lose that type of oversight. So I would say, use this email address, and we will be very responsive to those types of questions.

120

00:43:20 --> 00:43:53

Eric Trabert: Sara, I wanted to follow up on what you just said. So I'm glad you brought that up. Right, if someone wasn't receiving funding, they can still put in a request for TTA and I believe—correct me if I’m wrong here, though—that you can also request support even for an activity that you haven't written in your original work plan as a focus area of yours but you identify in the course of engaging with your subrecipients. Say this is an issue, they can still put in a request for us for support for those types of things as well, correct?

121

00:43:54 --> 00:44:27

Sara Sullivan: Yes, that's right. Also, there are opportunities that we will have to connect with the confinement field at large. So there may be technical assistance needs that arise through other communication mechanisms when the CNA team is talking to the field, and so they will do their best to keep you all informed and up to date about whatever activity is happening within your jurisdiction. Eric, if folks have questions, do you want them to just unmute or put it in the chat or either?

122

00:44:28 --> 00:44:33

Eric Trabert: Either/or. I think we have a smaller group. If you want to unmute and just fire away, please do.

123

00:44:34 --> 00:44:47

Eric Trabert: Don't be shy if something is on your mind in here. If you’re looking for some information, we'll do our best to answer. If not, that's fine, too. You can always reach out at the email if something kind of pops in your head an hour after we get off the webinar today.

124

00:44:48 --> 00:44:58

Tammy Felix: Eric and Sara, I don't want to steal anyone's thunder, but I think the one thing that we didn't explicitly mention was that this is a completely free service to all of the ELC recipients.

125

00:44:59 --> 00:45:03

Tammy Felix: This does not come out of your grant funding. We're here to just help to make sure that you're successful.

126

00:45:04 --> 00:45:44

Eric Trabert: Okay, unless anyone has anything else they want to talk about in terms of next steps, as I mentioned before, any questions you have or requests for information or TTA support, please email them to us at that address right there. Please take a few minutes just to complete the webinar feedback so we get an idea if this is helpful for you. Did you find the virtual environment to work? Like material covered? And also, as I mentioned earlier, what are some topics you would want to see covered in the future webinar as well? We’re happy to see those and get those scheduled.

127

00:45:45 --> 00:45:59

Eric Trabert: We're going to publish the fact sheets and frequently asked questions pretty soon, so keep an eye out for that. We will put that out to you. We'll send that out to each of you through the email that we have. One thing I wanted to mention.

128

00:46:00 --> 00:46:14

Eric Trabert: If there is someone that you would like to be on our distribution list that we don't, that you're not sure if we currently have their email for, please send that… you can send that to us via the email address we have at the top.

129

00:46:15 --> 00:46:25

Eric Trabert: Whoever is your primary point of contact for this award or someone else that is working with you on this award that you would like to receive that sort of information.

130

00:46:26 --> 00:46:30

Sara Sullivan: Well, Eric, do you also want to mention the peer group that Oklahoma had started and you guys have taken over?

131

00:46:31 --> 00: 47:31

Eric Trabert: Yeah, thank you for reminding me about that. I stressed a lot earlier about the importance of peer-to-peer engagement and collaboration, and actually, before we even came on board right, the Oklahoma Department of Health had reached out and established a healthcare peer group that meets monthly just to talk about what people are doing. The same kind of discussion we had today—what people are dealing with, their funding, how they're approaching things, what issues or challenges they might be having, so that they can brainstorm ways around those, or somebody who’s encountered something similar that's found a way around it that can share their lesson learned. So if you are interested, I know there are a couple of people in this call who are already part of that peer group. But if you're not, and you're interested in joining it, send me a note to the email address up above there. The group meets every first Wednesday of the month.

132

00:47:32 --> 00:47:37

Eric Trabert: I believe it's from 12 noon Eastern to 1 p.m.

133

00:47:38 --> 00:48:00

Eric Trabert: I think I got that time right, but we are coordinating that group. So if you want to be added to the to the distribution list for those meetings, send us an email. We'll put you on the list. We set up agendas and then facilitate those meetings. I think they're really valuable, just informal ways, very informal ways, to just talk about anything that’s going on, any questions that you have that you might want to share with others.

134

00:48:01 --> 00:48:04

Sara Sullivan: You can also just put your email in the chat right now if you want to be added on to that group.

135

00:48:05 --> 00:48:33

Eric Trabert: I mentioned that publishing the fact sheets and the frequently asked questions. We're also, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to start initiating that recipient engagement in the needs assessment. So, coming out and talking with you one-on-one just to learn more about what you're doing in your program and your needs and those that you're seeing in your subrecipients. As I mentioned, sign up in the Doodle poll for times that might work for you. If we don't hear from you, expect us to reach out to you and try to get something on the calendar.

136

00:48:34 --> 00:48:48

Eric Trabert: We will be looking at some upcoming webinars that we can do that again. A lot of this is just like, how can we reach out and then connect with those in the field? So some future webinars may be more targeted towards the corrections and confinement facility partners.

137

00:48:49 --> 00:48:58

Eric Trabert: But as I mentioned in the webinar feedback form, put any ideas you have of something to talk about that you think will be useful to cover and we can set that up.

138

00:48:59 --> 00:49:17

Eric Trabert: As Sara mentioned, we are going to start doing some outreach to the fields, and major associations in the field, and to start identifying contacts that we can produce more direct outreach to tell them about the program, what services are available, and how they can access it or something.

139

00:49:18 --> 00:49:35

Eric Trabert: Alright. Well, thank you all again for taking time out of your day. We really appreciate you attending today's webinar. And again, we'll provide links for the recording, the transcript, and the slides from today.

140

00:49:36 --> 00:49:39

Eric Trabert: We’ll get those out to you soon and have them posted.

141

00:49:40 --> 00:49:42

Eric Trabert: If you have any questions, again, don’t hesitate to reach out and we’ll add you to the contact list.

142

00:49:43 --> 00:49:46

Eric Trabert: Thanks very much. I hope you all have a good rest of your day