Local resilience programs take on COVID-19, disaster relief — Employing residents for public good
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* Mark Barna

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Workers with the New York City Cleanup Corps repair a fence at the Greenwood Playground in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, in May. Local resilience programs are supporting pandemic recovery, disaster preparedness and maintenance of public spaces.

Photo by Michael Appleton, courtesy New York City Mayoral Photography Office

Faced with growing weather-related disasters and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, local leaders across the U.S. are stepping up to form teams to boost resilience, particularly for vulnerable residents.

In communities such as Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City, resilience programs are providing jobs and skills for pandemic recovery, disaster preparedness and maintenance of public spaces.

“These workforces are here to stay, especially in a place like New Orleans, where we know that what ever the next national disaster, these workers will be invaluable to reaching people who are not able to be reached by phone or internet,” said Marina Pravdic, senior associate of communications, policy and advocacy at the Rockefeller Foundation, which provides support to several local resilience programs.

Community-led resilience programs can serve regions that Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars seldom reach, said Craig Fugate, a former FEMA administrator who is chief resilience officer at One Concern. In the past, FEMA has struggled to get relief to small cities and underrepresented communities, he said.

“There is a little town on the Florida panhandle called Panacea, on the Gulf Coast, that floods during high tide,” Fugate told *The Nation’s Health*. “That community is not going to get those federal dollars coming. Miami Beach will get the dollars, Tampa Bay will, Jacksonville will. But these smaller communities won’t be able to compete.”

The Biden administration has proposed a civilian climate corps, in which young adult workers repair infrastructure and restore environments damaged by extreme weather. And last year, FEMA released its 2022-2026 plan for addressing natural disasters, with emphasis on aid to under-represented communities.

But rather than wait for federal assistance, local resilience programs can quickly mobilize to reduce and repair infrastructure damage and aid in health care, Fugate said. And local workers have the advantage of knowing a community and its residents personally.

“The idea is to match up people looking to move up in skill sets and put them in areas where resources are not there to manage and construct these mitigation projects,” said Fugate, an advisor to the New Orleans Resilience Corps.

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In April, a Resilience Corps worker in New Orleans offers information to passersby about a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination site.

Photo courtesy the Rockefeller Foundation

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, several local resilience projects in New Orleans have confronted flooding vulnerability, including the Resilience Corps. When COVID-19 reached the city’s low-income neighborhoods in 2020, the corps shifted priorities, partnering with the city to create a workforce development program to head off spread. Financial support came from the city and philanthropic groups such as Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Under the New Orleans corps, more than 40 community members, all unemployed, furloughed or underemployed, were hired to work in their respective neighborhoods. They conducted wellness checks, delivered groceries and educated community residents on testing and vaccination. COVID-19 vaccination has increased 60% in some neighborhoods, Pravdic said, largely because residents find the workers relatable.

“Trust with a capital ‘T’ has been the most important thing,” she said. “To have people who speak the language, literally and figuratively, it has been invaluable.”

Partnerships with the city and health groups have been important to the corps’ success, Pravdic said. This year, the corps plans to partner with Ochsner Health System and Louisiana Children’s Medical Center to streamline job placement for qualifying corps workers.

The New Orleans corps will eventually re-focus on mitigation and adaptation projects to improve climate resilience, another ongoing threat to vulnerable residents.

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Willietta Gombeh-Fonjungo, MPH, a site supervisor for the Baltimore Health Corps, staffs a mobile vaccine clinic at a city school in October. She works to build trust in vaccines.

Photo by Kim Hairston, courtesy the Baltimore Sun

In Maryland, the Baltimore Health Corps formed in the city in June 2020. The public-private program is funded by the city, which tapped into funds received from the American Rescue Plan, and philanthropic groups such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bloom-berg Philanthropies and Rockefeller Foundation.

The corps is a workforce development program focused on COVID-19 mitigation in low-income Baltimore City neighborhoods. Organizers want to improve local public health while creating jobs for thousands of people who were unemployed or furloughed by the pandemic. Prior to the emergency, unemployment in Baltimore City was nearly 5%, according to city records. By April 2020, two months into the pandemic, unemployment had surged to 11.6%.

Officials in city government and the Baltimore City Health Department oversee the program. Nearly 300 community members were hired and trained to perform contact tracing, care coordination and educate on COVID-19 protocols. Over 70% live in Baltimore City.

Though the corps jobs are temporary, organizers have created a job placement arm, said Emilia Carrera, MPH, manager of health initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. As of January, 12 care coordinators had applied for a community health work certification from the state.

In April 2021, New York City launched the City Cleanup Corps. It has a different emphasis than the programs in New Orleans and Baltimore City, but still embraces resilience.

> “The idea is to match up people looking to move up in skill sets and put them in areas where resources are not there to manage and construct these mitigation projects.”
> 
> *— Craig Fugate*

During the pandemic, parks and outdoor centers in urban areas are coveted destinations for people wanting to escape the confines of home but also stay safe. The corps, a partnership of about two dozen city agencies and community organizations, hired thousands of residents from the city’s five boroughs to clean up public spaces, some of which had become unkempt and garbage-filled during the pandemic.

Governors Island, a popular area for people to spend time outdoors during the pandemic, has especially benefited from the corps’ cleanup work.

“As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt, our open spaces here in New York are more important than ever,” Claire Newman, president and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island, said in a December statement.

Twenty-one public art murals have been created through the New York City program, mostly in disadvantaged communities impacted by COVID-19. The murals express hope and empowerment.

Officials in other U.S. cities who are planning their own resilience programs can look to the pilot programs for guidance. The Baltimore Health Corps pilot offers lessons in hiring practices and organization.

Because of health concerns, some Baltimore City workers were not sent into their neighborhoods for contact tracing and coordinated care when the project began in August 2020, said Dylan Roby, PhD, an associate professor of health, society and behavior at the University of California, Irvine. The workers instead became part of a contact tracing call center, talking by phone to people usually outside their community.

Also, the city hiring process created barriers because it required background checks, drug testing and other bureaucracy, said Roby, lead author of “Early Lessons from the Baltimore Health Corps Pilot,” a spring 2021 report.

“Quite a few people selected for hire did not receive offers for weeks or months,” during which time many found other jobs or changed plans, Roby told *The Nation’s Health*.

Removing some of the barriers for applicants and new hires encourages greater workforce equity and accelerates hiring, Roby said.

Once COVID-19 is contained, the Baltimore corps could pivot to climate resilience, following the model of the New Orleans Resilience Corps, Roby said. Enough positives have emerged from the Baltimore City pilot to suggest it is a viable platform for improving community public health, he said.

For more information, visit [www.baltimorecorps.org](http://www.baltimorecorps.org) and [www.rockefellerfoundation.org](http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association