Local opinion: Building a resilient Arizona

COVID-19 has barely faded from our minds as updates on H5N1 bird flu infections of tens of thousands of birds, cows and even three people headline the news. Indeed, it is inevitable that the next infectious public health emergency will strike us; it is just a matter of when. We can act now to address the impact.

As we all saw during COVID-19, infectious outbreaks have become a continuum of crises requiring a comprehensive strategy to prevent, prepare for, and respond to them. The same could be said of other public health emergencies, and the responding strategies and our preparation are, in part, overlapping. The response to COVID-19 exemplifies the need for improving health infrastructures and comprehensively preparing society to handle widespread economic, social, and public health challenges. New systems and solutions must also be established to decrease the impacts of crises, especially when they first emerge.

A summit convened by the University of Arizona Health Sciences Aegis Consortium recently explored how to create a pandemic-resilient Arizona: a comprehensive, integrated, and scalable system to detect and manage public health threats. This summit brought together disparate groups from county and state health departments, the private sector, and state universities in recognition that pandemics and public health emergencies are a collective threat that requires collective action. Indeed, the 17th Surgeon General of the US, Dr. Richard Carmona, said during his opening remarks that a big problem of the COVID-19 pandemic was “not knowing what we needed to know to keep people safe.”

This summit is a pivotal step to “break ground” on what we know we must do to keep people safe. We proposed and discussed the first comprehensive system in the nation to early detect, manage, and mitigate an extreme public health emergency within Arizona.

The convened group committed to collaboratively addressing gaps across three initial priorities:

Data Operability

Data sets across the public and private health systems currently don’t talk to one another or speak the same language. To make these data systems work together, we must develop a collaborative system that standardizes definitions, agrees to necessary metrics, and prioritizes which data is made available. This robust and agile data, available in real-time, will underpin the actions taken in a resilient Arizona.

Early Detection & Surveillance

Sensitive and specific early warning systems are necessary to identify and manage early infectious disease outbreaks. Wastewater surveillance pioneered at the University of Arizona during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed students back on campus both rapidly and safely. Expanding this program and others like it can help communities take early action and protect our state and our border from invisible microbial invasions.

We now know when to “flip the switch” and activate a hot spot map, showing where and how to identify and manage early disease outbreaks across Arizona communities, especially rural areas and within at-risk populations.

Hospital Systems

When an emergency affects a community, the local health system is often stretched beyond capacity. The current healthcare systems have been living on the edge when it comes to responding to a public health emergency. Summit participants agreed to establish a real-time, data-backed surge line to manage the flow of patients and ensure that acute care patients across Arizona are transferred to the most appropriate facility that can best treat them.

These initial actions will complement the other elements of a comprehensive approach to protect Arizonans. We can be ready for the next pandemic unlike ever before.

This convening — and strengthening the resultant relationships built through it — was the first step in bringing together all Arizonans to develop outbreak and emergency response solutions across disciplines, industries, and borders. We can and will create a resilient Arizona as a model for the nation and communities worldwide.