Fear, language barriers hinder immigrant contact-tracing

The University of California, Irvine is trying to help counties by training people from low-income, minority areas to be contact tracers in their own communities, said Daniel Parker, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor of public health. Tracers are provided with loose scripts to help with their calls, but “they already have the intuition (about) the best way to get the information and what to ask,” he said. “They have the same lived experiences and know how to approach the community better.”