Health Education England elearning for healthcare (HEE elfh) has worked in partnership with Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the University of Salford to develop a new elearning programme on contact tracing.

This important public health tool is used to control the spread of a variety of infectious diseases. During the Coronavirus pandemic, it has helped to break the chain of transmission within communities across the country and around the world.

To support this work, COVID-19: Contact Tracing at the Community Level has been designed to help colleagues and organisations, that are likely to be involved with contact tracing but may have little experience of how it works, understand the role of community-enabled contact tracing.

On a community level, COVID-19 has presented a range of unique challenges to the Greater Manchester population, due to the housing, employment and social geographic landscape of the city region, including how daily lives involve more mixing than other areas. In response to these challenges, Greater Manchester has been at the forefront of establishing a local contact tracing function as part of the delivery of Level 1 of the national NHS Test and Trace arrangements. Part of this response focused on health education and promotion.

The elearning programme aims to improve the effectiveness of this response within Greater Manchester but can be applied to any community across the UK. The resource comprises the following 2 modules:

• Introduction to Contact Tracing
• Introduction to Infection Control

On completion of the modules, colleagues should have a good understanding of contact tracing, infection prevention and control. They should also be able to consider the role of contact tracing in a variety of settings.

For more information and to access the programme, visit the COVID-19: Contact Tracing at the Community Level programme page.