Triangle contact tracers meeting the needs of diverse speaking communities

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is actively hiring and training contact tracers to place in counties across the state. In the Triangle, health departments are trying to meet the need of diverse speaking communities.

Posted 9:08 p.m. Jun 18, 2020 — Updated 11:45 p.m. Jun 18, 2020

Lora Lavigne

, WRAL multimedia journalist

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is actively hiring and training contact tracers to place in counties across the state.

In the Triangle, health departments are trying to identify and hire multilingual tracers to meet the need of diverse speaking communities.

Contact tracers are considered the disease detectives. Places like the Orange County Health Department realized the need for these COVID-19 investigators to reach more multicultural communities.

When the phone rings at local health departments, it's usually something that demands immediate attention.

“The reason this is so important right now is because we continue to see the growth in the number of cases,” said Todd McGee, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Department, which is stepping up its tracing program to meet the need of eight different languages.

“We have significant populations in the county that speak Chinese, as well as refugees that speak Burmese and Karen. So we’ve always known that those are needs,” McGee explained.

The program has 11 contact tracers and is currently training eight more. Their languages range from Swahili to Kinyarwanda and Arabic, just to name a few.

“And each of our tracers has the ability, through a service that we use here in the county, to add a person to a phone call that is a translator for whatever language needed. So, I guess the amount of languages are infinite,” he added.

In Wake County, there are 110 contact tracers who are all librarians, like Hallie Yamamoto.

“You know, there’s a small number of bilingual contact tracers," Yamamoto said. "But of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to speak every language."

Wake County uses three languages. English, Spanish and Korean. They depend mostly on technology to face other language barriers.

“We do have more diverse people living in the Triangle area. So, that can be something we run into, but we use a great translation service,” she added.

Wake County is currently looking for bilingual staff and working with contract companies to fill those positions. Orange County’s new team is starting this week.

Durham County Department of Public Health sent this statement regarding its’ contact tracing program:

“DCoDPH has both bilingual tracers and the availability of translation through an interpreter line to provide tracing in several languages. We have continued to meet the language needs of all contacts. If additional tracers become necessary, we will work with our state and local partners to continue to meet the need.”

Reliable Information

For the latest information and guidance relating to Orange County’s COVID-19 response:

Visit www.orangecountync.gov/coronavirus.
Receive daily text updates Monday through Friday on the crisis by texting 888-777 with OCNCHEALTH for English speakers and OCNCSALUD for Spanish speakers.
Sign up for a twice weekly e-newsletter about the COVID-19 response via the county website.
Follow the Orange County Health Department on Facebook and Twitter.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services updates its COVID-19 case count dashboard daily at 12 p.m.

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