CONTRACE Information

CONTRACE is a social enterprise based in Washington, DC, founded to help address the absence of a federal strategy to scale the contact tracing workforce for COVID-19. Launched in April, 2020, CONTRACE was the first organization to nationally recruit individuals to work or volunteer as COVID-19 contact tracers, and deployed a workforce into several regions. Our position as first mover led to urgent engagement with hundreds of contact tracing stakeholders in the US and internationally. Informed by this experience, CONTRACE gained a clear understanding of the workforce, logistical, political, technology and culture war challenges facing contact tracing and became a leading expert on the overall COVID-19 contact tracing ecosystem. As the pandemic continued & the US staffing industry scaled up their efforts to provide the necessary workforce to support contact tracing, CONTRACE evolved to focus more on advocacy & thought leadership. Our advocacy for COVID-19 contact tracing has appeared extensively in the press across 33 countries, including The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, Associated Press and Harvard’s Data-Smart City Solutions. Our guidance for state government officials was published by Harvard Kennedy School Review and our Founder is a featured panelist at the World Vaccine Congress and Disease Prevention & Control Summit America.