Report criticizes failure to bring primnary health providers into a front line role against the Covid pandemic.

Integrating Primary Care and Public Health to Save Lives | Report Integrating Primary Care and Public Health to Save Lives and Improve Practice During Public Health Crises: Lessons from COVID-19 Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Center released a new report finding that the failure to bring primary care providers into a frontline role as responders to the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the public health system, resulted in many missed opportunities. 

Study participants also indicated that better integration of primary care, public health, and community-based organizations could have provided greater support for the public health response. The authors conclude that action is needed to address the barriers that exist between primary care and public health and to correct misalignment across systems, and provide several recommendations. ...

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The findings of this study demonstrate that the failure to bring primary care providers into a frontline role as responders, alongside public health, resulted in many missed opportunities to provide better quality care, faster testing, more effective contact tracing, greater acceptance of vaccination, and better communication with patients. Participants in this study further indicated that better integration of primary care, public health, and community-based organizations could have provided greater support for the public health response, thereby easing the burden on overstretched public health personnel; and could have accessed primary care’s reach to amplify public health messaging. If these coordinated activities had been effectively implemented, they could have saved lives and reduced the health, economic, and societal impact of the pandemic in the United States. ....