North Texas health leaders have spent more than a year preparing for the FIFA World Cup, which starts this month.
Arlington is hosting nine matches during one of the largest sporting events in the world. Hospital and public health officials said what they’re doing hasn’t changed much – but how they do it has.
Courtney Edwards directs a team at Parkland Hospital that provides support and guidance to emergency medical services. Her team tends to focus on natural disasters and other emergencies that are more common.
“Now, we’ve just added a large sporting event to that,” she said.
Planning on the regional level
The Metroplex will host the most matches out of any city, with fans from various countries traveling in to see their teams play.
While North Texas is used to big events, like the State Fair and popular concerts, health leaders say the scale of the World Cup is the biggest challenge.
“It's really taking everybody for this all to occur,” Edwards said.
Parkland is a world cup “designated facility.” That means it will receive the patients if there’s a mass casualty event or something that requires trauma-level care on the east side of the Metroplex during the tournament.
“Whether it's because FIFA is in town or not, we continue to do what we do and provide that excellent care,” Edwards said. “How things change a little bit is that integration with our partners, understanding their processes.”
With the responsibility of being a designated facility and a significant part of the emergency response system in North Texas, Parkland was one of the organizations involved in the thorough planning process. Edwards has attended monthly meetings for about a year and a half with other leaders from hospitals, public health departments, emergency medical service providers, law enforcement and local governments.
Edwards said the meetings were meant to bring people together to figure out who could do what, and where there were gaps.
“From a whole group standpoint, what we can imagine is all being covered by someone that is sitting at the table,” she said. “Or on the other hand, if there's a plan that you're like ‘What do we do in X situation?’ And everyone kind of looks across the table and no one says, ‘I can do that’ or ‘we do that.’ Then that's an area for us to reinforce and make plans.”
There were also some steps hospitals and health systems took internally to prepare for the next couple of months.
Parkland leadership has been working to ensure additional staff are available and preparing the language translation service provider for higher demand. Edwards said FIFA and the World Cup were a factor in speeding up some improvements Parkland already wanted to make – like adding more than 50 beds at Parkland Memorial Hospital in the Medical District in Dallas.
At the same time, doctors and departments have been getting ready for health issues they already expect to encounter – including heat-related injuries, like severe sunburns or dehydration.
Becky Tucker, senior vice president of channel integration for Texas Health Resources – one of the largest health systems in North Texas – said it has also been preparing. One of its hospitals in Fort Worth is also a World Cup designated facility.
She said the system has been preparing all its 29 hospitals the same way – regardless of whether they are designated for trauma-level care during an emergency related to the World Cup.
“We have taken an approach to ensure that our entire hospital community within Texas Health is prepared,” Tucker said. “We've really been focused on coordinating efforts so that our care teams across our system have everything that they may need during the World Cup event.”
Texas Health’s system-wide approach also includes preparing its 33 urgent care center locations.
“It positions us well to be able to support the needs across the entire Metroplex should we need to,” Tucker said. “We've got hospitals and care venues that are in close proximity to either where the matches will be played or those training locations.”
Public health departments asked to do more without support
Dr. Phillip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, or DCHHS said the influx of people coming for the World Cup presents a challenge for public health.
“We always say some weird, infectious disease is only a plane ride away or something,” he said.
Huang said his team has to handle a lot more work – without additional funding.
DCHHS has increased disease monitoring efforts to make its system quicker and more effective. That’s included updating its data systems and adjusting the scale of testing that it already does.
In addition to keeping a close eye on emergency department visits that could pose a public health threat, the department has started testing for a wider range of diseases in both wastewater and mosquito traps – as well as increasing the number of traps it sets.
“In our area, mosquito-borne diseases are a big thing,” Huang said. “We have been a center for West Nile virus in the past, but we're increasing the number of pathogens that we're also testing for our mosquitoes.”
That wider range of testing includes viruses that may not be a common concern in North Texas but may be a concern due to more international travel.
Huang’s department is also responsible for contact tracing, disease prevention, education and outreach – which can be complicated by the World Cup.
He said public health officials have to share information in a wider range of languages and quickly identify infectious disease concerns.
Huang is part of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a group of local health officials from large metropolitan areas across the country.
Ahead of the World Cup, the group highlighted the necessity for collaboration between cities.
Dr. Marcus Plescia, public health director of Fulton County, Georgia, where Atlanta is located, said something that starts in one city can quickly become a public health concern somewhere else.
“Some fans are going to travel with their teams,” Plescia said. “Somebody might be here for a game in Atlanta and be exposed to something…But by the time we’ve realized that and started to look at who might be at risk that fan might have traveled to Dallas to see their team playing there.”
Members of the Big City Health Coalition said they plan to collaborate with each other to ensure they can promote the health of their communities with the most information possible. He said a lot of the world cup funding has gone towards public safety.
“Public health isn’t usually the first thought regarding resources,” Huang said. “There have been some resources associated with the world cup, but that has not – at least in our community – come to public health.”
Despite the lack of support, Huang says the world cup is a great opportunity for the region that took a lot of work from a lot of people.
Potential lasting effects
Courtney Edwards with Parkland Health said that work may benefit North Texas on a grander scale.
She and other health leaders said it will show the region’s strength on a “global stage,” and she hopes to continue to use the partnerships formed over the past year to strengthen the emergency health care system moving forward.
“Hopefully, the plans that we are putting into place aren't just for this event,” she said. “[And] it is going to create lasting and sustainable change for our [regions] response to big events, whether it’s another mass sporting event of if it’s a big concert or some other fun event that we have yet to even think about.”
