Value of environmental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a story from Indian Country.

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged not only the healthcare industry, but also the public health infrastructure in new and wide-ranging ways. Environmental Health (EH) professionals have proven to be an essential component of the interdisciplinary public health solution required to prevent, respond, and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian Health Service's Division of Environmental Health Services is a community-based program offering a broad scope of environmental health services and technical assistance. Significant COVID-19 workload activities were recorded from March 2020 through March 2021. 62.7% of the Division's federal staff completed a 24-question survey in February/March 2021. Primary roles relating to community-based EH, Institutional EH, and incident command system support/teams became apparent. Results indicated DEHS staff provided critical leadership and used their established, trusted, interdisciplinary partnerships to help ensure critical resources and services were available in Indian Country.