Angelenos in Action

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

Traditional public health surveillance relies on patient interactions with the healthcare system. With COVID-19, people with mild symptoms were initially directed to call their healthcare providers instead of presenting for direct clinical care, especially as testing was initially scarce and inefficient. Even after COVID-19 testing became more widely available and guidance changed to encourage testing, many still avoided the healthcare system and, therefore, would not be detected by the current monitoring systems that required either a test or a medical visit. Therefore, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health developed Angelenos in Action - a community participatory daily text-based survey to assess whether participants were experiencing respiratory symptoms as COVID-19 in the community. This tool provided early indications ahead of case-based surveillance on the onset, peak, and offset of past COVID-19 surges in LA County.