TLI Accepting Grants from Companies & Business Groups to Support Pandemic Preparedness Community Collaboratives
Download White Paper: America’s Business Community Leads Pandemic Response and Preparedness- COVID-19 recovery, resilience to economic fall-out and support for Community Collaborative model to prevent the next public health crisis
Authors: Bill Oldham, Founder, and Chairman of the Board, & Shawn Murphy Executive Director
Despite its devastating impact on populations and businesses worldwide, COVID-19 is providing an opportunity to reassess, discover and strengthen the fabric of communities and states across the country in order to mitigate the brunt of future health crises. While we are “all in this together,” the Thought Leadership and Innovation Foundation (TLI) is experienced and well positioned to take action and set the agenda for addressing the factors that affect the strength and resilience of individuals, businesses, policymakers and communities.
Read on to learn about the power of TLI’s Community Collaboratives to galvanize business and healthcare leaders to deal head-on with a healthcare emergency without any hesitation or time lost due to a lack of preparation.
By working together and taking action now, we can learn from this tragic pandemic and move forward to repair and effect positive change.
Introduction
Since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world. As the deadly virus sweeps across the United States, the White House coronavirus task force has presented a dire projection of between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths – well beyond the 12,500 Americans killed by the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.[1]
As this pandemic continues to rage around the world, pandemic preparedness is impacting businesses of every size and scope throughout the country. Some may falter and smaller organizations are likely to feel its force more acutely. Business interruption, closures and lost opportunities for sales will resonate across every industry.
For these reasons, it is in the best interest of business leaders nationwide to not only react to the current and ongoing coronavirus challenge but to also prepare for future health crises that have the power to cripple our economic climate.
Evidence suggests that the likelihood of pandemics has increased over the past century because of increased global travel and integration, urbanization, changes in land use and greater exploitation of the natural environment.[2] These trends are likely to continue and intensify. Significant policy attention has focused on the need to identify and limit emerging outbreaks that might lead to pandemics and to expand and sustain investment to build preparedness and health capacity.[3]
As COVID-19 reached the shores of this country, many were caught off-guard and considerable catch-up is necessary, with drastic measures being taken to avoid potentially unnecessary and avoidable economic disruption, slow the spread of the virus and save lives.
Employers and employees alike are paying a steep price with the mandated closing of businesses and the furloughing of employees nationwide. Unprecedented measures were put in place and unemployment reached record levels—with nearly 10 million filing for unemployment benefits in a two-week period.[4]
Knowing that this “once in a lifetime” pandemic is likely to occur again in our lifetime, it has become imperative that a new and effective means of protecting both employer and employee – and ensuring the survival of businesses -- must emerge outside of government programs.
This white paper explores the economic fall-out of the current pandemic, and the extraordinary value and impact of the TLI community collaborative approach to high-level challenges: we help communities to build solutions outside of government programs, while drawing on our federal experience to serve as a strong partner to communities seeking to access federal funding.
COVID-19’s Economic Fall-Out
As the impact of the pandemic worldwide continues to play out with deaths, business closures, and stock market decline, businesses prepare for recovery. Every organization looks forward to the “bounce,” which requires coordination and cooperation throughout the community. Overcoming supply chain failures, loss of work due to illness, the widespread effect of quarantines, travel restrictions and the closing of non-essential businesses and loss of income and profits[5] requires diligence.
Given the unprecedented nature of this ongoing catastrophe, it can be informative to look at the economic impact of past epidemics. The Black Death, a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s, killed so many people that wages for surviving workers doubled. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed 675,000 Americans. This epidemic peaked just as World War I ended, with many experts pointing to the drop in demand for war materials and demobilization, and not the Spanish Flu, as a trigger for the ensuing recession.[6]
But today the circumstances are much different. At the time, President Woodrow Wilson added to the death toll by censoring news to keep people working. There were no measures imposed, such as social distancing, closing bars and restaurants or opportunities to work from home. While actions in 2020 are likely to reduce the total death rate, they still bear a heavy economic toll.[7]
On a more optimistic note, a mere six weeks ago, the U.S. economy was strong with unemployment at a 50-year low, strong wage growth and record optimism among small businesses.[8] Regardless of where the nation lands, companies need to be ready for a new normal for how they conduct business.
Critical Time to Work Together
Public health is a shared responsibility. Communities, businesses and individuals can and should take measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and follow recommendations from the CDC on how families, schools and businesses can plan for and respond to the virus.[9]
TLI supports these CDC recommendations and urges state and local chambers, its members, and the wider business community to adopt and implement these standards, if they have not done so already.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pushing government leaders to quickly take several common sense steps to provide assistance and relief to businesses and workers alike, while urging Americans to not overreact in ways that hamper efforts to control the spread of the virus or cause unnecessary disruptions in daily life.
TLI Community Collaborative Approach
TLI’s goal is to be a facilitator of essential business planning to assure preparedness in the face of a regional or national health emergency, epidemic or pandemic of extraordinary proportions.
This can be accomplished by eliciting the input of an extensive grouping of local business and healthcare leaders and serving as a depository for information and guidance needed in the event of a significant healthcare crisis. By developing partnerships with these leaders in public and private businesses the outcome will be a better-prepared community to deal head-on with a healthcare emergency without any hesitation or time lost due to a lack of preparation.
It is in the best interest of business leaders to not only react to current and ongoing pandemic challenges, but to also prepare for future catastrophic events. Experts believe that the world’s leaders are ill-prepared for outbreaks of infectious diseases, and businesses are unprepared for the significant economic, social and political disruption.
Work with Us
TLI is developing partnerships and creating plans for businesses to protect their communities in the event of regional, national and worldwide disasters. TLI’s extensive experience with community collaboratives, as well as our involvement with government and community leaders, can be leveraged to launch a coordinated and educational outreach plan to business groups, coalitions, grantors and others with a vested interest in supporting these programs.
The plan will generate interest through in-person contact when possible, as well as formal outreach to all targets. Our proactive public relations program includes press releases, media outreach, thought leadership, bylined articles, public service announcements, social media, blogs and other support.
TLI has the resources, experience and organizational capabilities to implement community collaboratives. We are equipped with the skills, capabilities and background to provide emergency preparedness to business groups to protect the interests of their communities.
We use elements of a learning community to address the most important issues from the perspective of the collaborative participants. The collaborative is focused on action and utilizes the structures and processes of a formal breakthrough collaborative to move from idea generation to action to implementation of innovation. This unique hybrid model benefits from the rigor of a breakthrough collaborative while maintaining the flexibility seen in learning communities.
Looking Forward
Given the complicated fabric of society, solutions often overlap, intersect and carry unpredictable results that can be detrimental or sub-optimal unless a systematic collaborative approach is undertaken. This requires a broad multiple stakeholder perspective and action plan to fully address every dimension of a problem as deeply impactful and widespread as the COVID-19 pandemic. When community organizations coordinate their work and join forces on innovative interventions, they can avoid siloed actions that are not effective in solving complex problems.
References
[1] Noack, Rick et al; White House task force projects 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in U.S., even with mitigation efforts; Washington Post; April 1, 2020; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/31/coronavirus-latest-news/; accessed April 2, 2020.
[2] Madhav; Nita; Disease Control Priorities: Improving Health and Reducing Poverty. 3rd edition; Chapter 17Pandemics: Risks, Impacts, and Mitigation NCBI; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525302/; accessed April 2, 2020.
[3] Madhav.
[4] Oil Soars as Trump Flags Saudi-Russia Production Deal: Live Updates; New York Times; April 2, 2020; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage; accessed April 2, 2020.
[5] Conerly, Bill; Economic Forecast Update March 20, 2020 For COVID-19, Coronavirus Impacts; Forbes; March 20, 2020; https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2020/03/20/economic-forecast-update-march-20-2020-for-covid-19-coronavirus-impacts/#75875e152f07; accessed April 2, 2020.
[6] Conerly, 2020.
[7] Conerly, 2020.
[8] Quick Take: Coronavirus' Economic Impact; U.S. Chamber of Commerce; March 16, 2020; https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/quick-take-coronavirus-economic-impact; accessed April 2, 2020.
[9] CDC; Coronavirus; https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/; accessed April 2, 2020.