Contact Tracer Job Description

Contact Tracers identify members of the public who were exposed to patients diagnosed with
infectious diseases. They call patients who contracted infectious diseases, establish which individuals
those patients had contact with, and initiate isolation protocols to limit further disease transmission.
They are employed by Local Health Departments.

Contact Tracer Job Description Template

We are seeking a dedicated Contact Tracer to assist us in our efforts to limit the spread of contagious
diseases. In this role, your duties will include determining who had contact with diagnosed patients,
conducting remote assessments of symptoms, and ensuring that those placed under quarantine comply
with isolation regulations.

To ensure success, Contact Tracers should possess excellent organizational skills and the ability to
work in an environment where strict adherence to policies and procedures is required. First-class
candidates exhibit sound judgment and exceptional interpersonal skills.

 Contact Tracer Responsibilities:

 Coordinating contact tracing efforts with Supervisors and Case Investigators from the Local
Health Department.
 Conducting interviews in a professional manner that reflects emotional and cultural
awareness.
 Collecting and recording accurate information using Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) software.
 Calling newly diagnosed patients to trace individuals they had contact with and determining
exposure.
 Interviewing traced contacts, assessing symptoms, and referring them for testing.
 Providing contacts with regulated information on isolation and quarantine procedures.
 Collaborating with designated local authorities in supporting the isolation and quarantine of
individuals.
 Maintaining ongoing virtual communication to monitor symptoms.
 Facilitating health checks and test, as well as referring contacts to available community
resources.
 Complying to all Health Department regulations, including those aimed at protecting personal
information.
Contact Tracer Requirements:

 High School Diploma or GED.

 College-level education preferred.
 Proficiency in CRM software, such as HubSpot and Zoho.
 Advanced proficiency in English, additional languages would be advantageous.
 Access to a telephone, computer, and reliable internet connection.
 Proficiency in MS Word, Excel, and Outlook Express, as well as data entry.
States are hiring thousands of coronavirus contact tracers—here’s
what to know about the job
In the past couple months, coronavirus has upended multiple industries,
forcing tens of millions of people out of the workforce. But some jobs, like
contact tracing, have become all the more necessary due to the pandemic.

Not only do experts predict an immediate need of at least 100,000 contact

tracers in the U.S., but in some states like New York, contact tracers can
make roughly $57,000 per year and earn a comprehensive benefits
package, according to a job posting by the Fund for Public Health in New
York City. The local government says it’s also providing “all necessary
equipment and internet connection” so that individuals can do this job
from home.

Though contact tracers have been around for decades, the increased
demand for them as a result of Covid-19 has sparked a lot of questions
about the impact these professionals can have on the pandemic. Below,
CNBC Make It breaks down the details around what contact tracers do and
what qualifications are needed before you can get hired to become one.

What are contact tracers?

Contact tracing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, is an essential part of a “multipronged approach to fight the
Covid-19 pandemic.”

In the past, contact tracers have been used to help slow the spread of many
infectious diseases like tuberculosis, HIV and other sexually transmitted
diseases, says Dr. Emily Gurley, an infectious disease epidemiologist and
associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health. She tells CNBC Make It that at the core of contact tracing, workers
are “trying to identify people who have been exposed to someone who is
infectious and you’re trying to let them know so that they can change their
behavior and not unknowingly or inadvertently infect anybody else.”
In the case of Covid-19, she says contact tracers will be used to reach out
to individuals who have tested positive for the virus. Because people with
Covid-19 often don’t show immediate symptoms and may not know they
have the illness until they receive an official diagnosis, contact tracers will
help the infected person remember and identify the people they have been
in close contact with during their diagnosis period and the two days
leading up to it. This will be done by asking questions about where the
person has been and who they’ve been in close proximity to at work, at
home or maybe in a car. This does not include, Gurley says, people you
may have passed on the street or someone you said a brief “hi” to. Once
those exposed individuals are identified, contact tracers will then make a
list of those people and contact them.

When contacting someone who has been exposed to the virus, Gurley, says
it’s important for contact tracers to not identify the infected person for
privacy protection reasons. “You’re not going to say, ‘Oh, you know, this
person has Covid-19 and you were around them,’” she says. Instead, she
explains that contact tracers will say something like, “We just have to let
you know that you have been exposed and here are the things that you
need to do next.”

Those next steps, according to the CDC, include contact tracers advising
individuals to stay home and maintain social distance from other people
for 14 days after they’ve been exposed to the virus. During this time, the
exposed individual will be encouraged to check their temperature twice a
day and monitor whether or not they develop any Covid-19 symptoms like
coughing or shortness of breath. Contract tracers will then check in with
these individuals periodically to ensure that these self-monitoring steps are
being taken. In the event that symptoms do arise, it will be suggested that
the person notifies a health-care professional for medical care.

Qualifications needed and how to get hired

Right now, Gurley says, the work of contact tracers is being done
remotely, but it’s a possibility that these positions could move to on-site
call centers in the future.

In order to meet the immediate demand of these roles, several states have
put forth their own plans to ramp up hiring including California partnering
with the University of California San Francisco to train up to 3,000 contact
tracers a week from now until early July.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s expected to employ 6,400 to
17,000 tracers statewide depending on the projected number of cases. To
fill these positions, the state is requiring candidates to fill out an
application and complete an interview before taking Johns Hopkins’ free
online “COVID-19 Contact Tracing” course. After the course, candidates
will have 72 hours to pass the course’s assessment before they become
eligible to be hired for the role.

Gurley, who serves as a lead instructor for the online course given by
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says that the hiring
process for contact tracers varies by state and that interested individuals
should contact their local health department to find out the application
process as well as the amount of hours they will be required to work. She
makes it clear that in order to take her course, you do not need a
background in infectious disease or public health, and she emphasizes that
the course was designed so that anyone with at least a high school
education will be able to follow it.

The course, which is made available to everyone for free via Coursera, is
put together by Johns Hopkins in partnership with former NYC mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies. Individuals who take the
six-hour course, Gurley says, will gain the basic knowledge they need to
know about contact tracing before applying to the role through their city or
state government. The course, which launched on May 11, has already
seen more than 150,000 learners sign up within the first week. Right now,
New York is the only state using the course as a requirement for hiring,
but Gurley says the curriculum is general enough for other states to use it
as well.

The course, she explains, is broken up into five sections. These sections
include the basic information about Covid-19 and how it’s transmitted; the
fundamentals of contact tracing, including how to identify a potentially
exposed person; the steps involved in investigating cases and tracing
contacts; the ethics of contact tracing, including respecting an individual’s
privacy; and the skills needed to be an effective communicator during the
tracing process.

“Ultimately, contact tracing is people helping other people,” says Gurley,

while emphasizing that good communication skills are a key part of the
job. “And so to be able to do that well you’ve got to be able to build a
rapport, including knowing how to talk to people but also knowing how to
actively listen.”

To help learners master this skill, Gurley says anyone who takes the course
will hear examples of what a call should sound like in terms of the
language and tone that should be used when talking with an infected
patient as well as an exposed contact.

Moving forward, Gurley says, she hopes that contact tracers will remain a
key part of the workforce and that state and local governments will
continue to prioritize training individuals in this field.

“If we had a more robust public health system, including people who knew
about contact tracing earlier, we could have ramped these folks in more
quickly and we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now,” she says, while
adding that the transmission of many Covid-19 cases could have been
controlled. “So my hope is that we take a lesson from this and realize that
public health is important. I would be very disappointed if we go through
all this to build up these public health workers and then just dismiss them
later on.”