FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 26, 2022 Contact: dempress@sfgov.org
San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency within the Department of Emergency Management was honored with the 2022 Bronze Innovative Practice Award by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). The award celebrates local health departments for developing innovative programs to meet the needs of their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The designation as a Bronze Innovative Practice demonstrates a high level of program innovation and reflects the collaboration, adaptability, and program resilience.
San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency’s (SF EMSA) COVID-19 Transportation Hub was one of 10 local health department programs to receive NACCHO’s Bronze Innovative Practice Award. The award was presented during the 2022 NACCHO360 Annual Conference in Atlanta on July 20, 2022.
During the initial phases of San Francisco’s COVID-19 response, the City’s EMSA developed a pandemic response Transportation Hub to stage and dispatch medical transport resources to support and reduce impacts to the EMS system. The Hub played a critical role in providing pandemic relief to vulnerable populations, people experiencing homelessness, and patients by transporting them to Shelter-In-Place (SIP) sites and medical facilities. It also supported testing and vaccinating those disportionately impacted by the pandemic due to ethnicity, geography, language, age, profession, people with disabilities, and/or pre-existing medical conditions.
“We are honored to receive NACCHO’s Bronze Innovative Practice Award. The Transportation Hub was successful thanks to the collaboration, teamwork, and dedication of hundreds of people over many months. I would like to thank everyone who was involved with this groundbreaking project that saved lives and kept our 911 system running without interruption. This project demonstrated San Francisco’s commitment to developing responsive and innovative public health programs that improve the health of local residents,” said Andrew Holcomb, EMS Director, Emergency Medical Services Agency.
“Local health departments have demonstrated remarkable innovation and resilience to better the health of their communities during the pandemic, and the 2022 Innovative Practice Awards highlight the very best practices,” said NACCHO’s Chief Executive Officer Lori Tremmel Freeman. “Winners excelled at various disciplines including promoting health equity, contact tracing, mobile testing, contactless medication delivery, and many more. NACCHO is very proud to join them in honoring the outstanding work done by local health departments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Innovative Practices are exciting approaches and strategies to local public health issues that were developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and were creatively adapted to meet the circumstances of the pandemic. The Innovative Practices honors are awarded to local health departments across the country for implementing programs that can demonstrate exemplary, adaptable programs with replicable outcomes. San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency’s (SF EMSA) COVID-19 Transportation Hub is one of many successful public health practices in areas that range from health equity and face mask distribution programs to contactless delivery methods and drive through testing. Read more about these award-winning practices here.
About San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency (SF EMSA)
SF EMSA is part of the SF Department of Emergency Management. We direct, plan, monitor, and evaluate the San Francisco EMS System in collaboration with system and community providers.
For more information about SF EMSA, please visit https://sf.gov/emsa.
Follow us on Twitter @SF_EMSA https://twitter.com/SF_EMSA
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About NACCHO
The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) represents the nation’s nearly 3,000 local governmental health departments. These city, county, metropolitan, district, and tribal departments work every day to protect and promote health and well-being for all people in their communities. For more information about NACCHO, please visit www.naccho.org .
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