Perspectives of public health organizations partnering with refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities for comprehensive COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing

Objectives: To understand public health organizations’ experiences providing comprehensive COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing, and related promising practices with refugee, immigrant and migrant communities. Methods: We interviewed public health professionals (September 2020 to February 2021) from local and state health departments using a geographically stratified, purposive sampling approach. A multidisciplinary team at the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants (NRC-RIM) conducted a thematic analysis of the data. Results: Six themes were identified: understanding community and public health context, cultivating relationships, ensuring linguistic and cultural concordance, communicating intentionally, evolving response, and implementing equity. The interconnection of themes and promising practices is explored. Conclusion: As public health continues to learn from and build upon COVID-19 response experiences, the thematic findings and potential promising practices identified in this project may foster proactive, community-engaged solutions for public health, and other organizations working and partnering with refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities. Implementing these findings with COVID-19 into current and future public health crisis responses may improve public health, collaborations with refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities, and staff wellbeing.