The Pandemic Response Officer (PRO) Program was first launched in 2020 by Cornell’s COVID-19 Response Team. Co-led by the MPH Program’s associate director, Dr. Gen Meredith, the campus-wide initiative set out to limit transmission and ensure that any Cornellian with COVID-19 would feel supported. “Early on,” says Dr. Meredith, “Cornell Health managed all the student cases, and the PRO Program really focused on employees.” But when the Delta variant hit in the fall of 2021 and cases spiked among students, “the PRO Program quickly expanded to cover student cases, so Cornell Health could focus on clinical care during the surge.”

By hiring, training, and supervising 25 MPH students as Pandemic Response Officers, the MPH Program managed rapid staffing up of the PRO Program. MPH student PROs served as case investigators, contact tracers, and resource navigators for Cornell COVID-19 cases. “PROs were able to experience how different organizational systems interacted to provide collective resources,” recalls Donna Leong, who had just arrived at Cornell as the new manager of workforce development when the Delta surge hit and Dr. Meredith asked her to help lead the PRO Program.

During both the Delta and Omicron surges, the PRO team was in regular communication with the Tompkins County Health Department, Cornell Health nurses, Cornell human resources and occupational medicine, Cornell administrators, and campus life groups, to understand trends, adapt processes, and inform actions to mitigate COVID impacts. PROs were assigned newly reported positive cases and contacted each person within an hour of diagnosis.

In addition to providing education on isolation and transmission prevention, PROs conducted contact tracing and connected positive cases with resources such as isolation housing, food assistance, clinical services, and academic or workplace leave. “We were really successful as a group at picking up disease transmission patterns and responding,” says Dr. Sabine Jamal, one of six MPH students who took on additional responsibilities as PRO Managers.

Dr. Jamal notes that identifying COVID-19 clusters, such as those among athletic teams, was essential to limiting widespread campus outbreaks. Dr. Jamal is a physician from the United Kingdom who joined the MPH Program to better understand the health disparities she had seen play out in emergency rooms before and during the pandemic. Like most of the other PRO Managers, Dr. Jamal wants to further health equity through a career in healthcare and medicine. As a PRO Manager, she was able to leverage her past experience with doctor-patient interactions. “Over the phone” she says, “someone needs to trust you in a short period of time.”

Dr. Parshad Mehta also drew upon his clinical experience as a dentist to “establish rapport and different lines of communication” with positive cases, university administrators, and the PRO team. He enrolled in the MPH Program after working as a Public Health Officer with the Ahmedabad city government in India, where he coordinated pandemic response to ensure the health and wellbeing of “minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status.”

“The PRO Manager experience has changed my trajectory and the way I look at health and quality of care,” says Jaylen Perkins, another PRO Manager. Perkins plans to attend medical school to help build more equitable healthcare systems in the U.S. “On the phone with individuals affected by a virus,” he reflects, “we have to be sensitive and compassionate, and let people vent.”

Gina George also plans to pursue a healthcare career, possibly in hospital administration. Before joining the PRO management team, she was trained by the New York State Department of Health to conduct contact tracing across five counties. The work was similar, she said, but the PRO Program felt “more personal” as part of the Cornell community. Two other MPH students, Marla Colino and Carolyn Voigt, also took on PRO Manager roles during the surges.

“The PRO model is really disease-agnostic,” says Leong, who recognizes how the PRO structure could support health departments in investigating and responding to other outbreaks, such as sexually transmitted infections and foodborne diseases. Before coming to Cornell, Leong was a mixed-methods researcher with Pew Charitable Trusts. She sees her role with the MPH Program as identifying a “new generation of public health needs” and developing a workforce to meet those needs.

The PRO Managers credit much of their success to Leong’s leadership on their team. “Donna has exemplified how to take future careers into perspective, and to see how a workflow and its moving pieces can change and adapt,” says George.

Written by Audrey Baker