Being prepared to respond to difficult situations that arise in public health practice is an essential skill for the public health workforce.This empathic responding guide was designed to train students, volunteers, and staff of the ASU COVID-19 Case Investigation Team. The guide provides an overview of empathic communication, walks through a framework for responding with empathy, and outlines common difficult situations that arise in public health along with ways to respond with empathy to these situations. This guide can be adapted to a wide variety of settings and is meant to be used as a training tool for public health case investigators and other staff. This guide, available in a full and an abridged version, can be paired with hands-on workshops to provide engaging continuing education opportunities for public health teams.

This Project Report documents the accomplishments of an extraordinary group of students, faculty, and staff at the Arizona state University, who participated in a year-long, multidisciplinary, first-of-its-kind academic endeavor entitled “The Making of a COVID Lab.” The lab that is the focus of this project is the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory, known simply as the ABCTL.

Under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Compton, a group of seven Barrett honors students have embarked on a truly unique team thesis project to create a documentary on the process of creating a COVID-19 testing laboratory. This documentary tells the story of the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL), the first lab in the western United States to offer public saliva testing to identify the presence of COVID-19.