CMP team receiving HSE Health Service Excellence Award

Acknowledged as having played a critical role in controlling the pandemic, the HSE’s National Contact Management Programme was among the winners in the 2021 HSE Health Service Excellence Awards.  Designed in a robust and agile manner, the CMP was created in a manner that would allow it to be re-purposed in the event other potential epidemic events happen in the future. The World Health Organization advise all nations to invest in strong public health infrastructure for the future and this CMP can readily adapted to respond to other infectious diseases.

To allow for the CMP to be planned and implemented at pace, those involved used the principle of co-design, including active listening to understand stakeholder needs.  They held design workshops and approached the whole enterprise with a very positive ‘can-do’ attitude . Engagement with regional Departments of Public Health was crucial and the CMP brought together diverse multidisciplinary teams. It further mobilised and educated a contact tracing workforce underpinned by a newly developed IT system.

Accepting the award on behalf of their team, Dr Sarah Doyle, Specialist in Public Health Medicine and Clinical Lead for the Contact Management Programme from March 2020 to March 2021 noted that “in establishing the CMP in March 2020, the idea was to provide contact tracing of high volume but low complexity cases and contacts – so that the Departments of Public Health could use their expertise to manage high complex settings and outbreaks.

“The impact of our CMP I believe was in the saving of thousands of lives.  It did this by breaking individual chains of transmission through advice to cases and close contacts.  A secondary impact was the impact it had on those of us who worked in the CMP – what it showed us was how, working as a team,  we could respond so effectively and so efficiently to a crisis of this magnitude.”