Pa. health departments expands covid testing sites through faith-based organizations

The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced Friday an aggressive plan to deal with disproportionately higher rates of covid-19 in African American communities.

In order to reduce the spread of the virus in areas where people have a greater chance of contracting it, beginning Saturday testing sites will be opened in partnership with faith-based organizations.

“In seeking to address the racial disparities of covid-19 transmission, the department is looking to partner with important community-based organizations, such as faith-based organizations and community health centers to support and provide testing,” said Secretary of Health Rachel Levine. “We encourage health providers to follow our lead in partnering with faith-based organizations to create testing sites at faith-based settings in impacted communities.”

In Allegheny County, the Allegheny Health Network, Cornerstone Care Community Health Center, Metro Community Health Center, Northside Christian Health Center, Primary Care Health Services, Inc. Sto-Rox Family Health Center and 21 congregations are now working with the health department on this endeavor.

“I think that, in general, anything that’s going to increase testing, make it easier for people to be tested and expands capacity is a good thing,” said Pittsburgh-based Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar and infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

“The main hurdle that we face with this infection is that people don’t know their status and it’s very hard for them to find out their status. Because of that we have people that are infectious that are out in the community leading to spread.”

Adalja said there are still too many people in Pennsylvania who have to wait several days to get a test result back in an outpatient setting.

“That’s not conducive to getting control of the virus because if people are not getting tested or their test results are coming back seven days later, that’s really a useless test,” he said. “The state trying to facilitate testing is a good thing. The important thing is that those tests need to be rapid turnarounds so that they’re actionable to the person and actionable to the health department so that they can start contact tracing.”

Levine said the health department is working to identify locations where there may be a need for accessible testing.

“While these relationships were built with the intention of closing the gap for covid-19 testing disparities, we are taking this opportunity to disseminate covid-19 messaging and foster long-term relationships with these churches,” said Levine.