Public Health and Safety

Question: To what extent does your event address public health through policies around masks, vaccines, COVID testing, and in infrastructure such as ventilation and air purification in indoor venues?

Context Tags: Event

Keywords: DEI, Events, Accessibility, Code of Conduct, COVID, Health

Description

Public health is a concern for all in-person events. Events have always come with the risk of contagious diseases, and that risk has been brought into focus by the COVID-19 pandemic. This risk is shared by everyone at and around an event, and is particularly exclusive of people with disabilities, chronic illness, caregivers, people who are otherwise at high risk, and those who live with them. Addressing that risk is a multi-layered problem that is highly context dependent. To help, there exist bodies of work, such as the Public Health Pledge, which can be used to navigate this important issue. It is not possible to completely eliminate risk, and even event organizers who do their best will find themselves with additional measures they wanted to take but couldn’t. Even with limitations, an event organizer should do their very best to implement a robust multi-layered approach to public health, and provide information about the measures they’ve taken so that prospective participants have an opportunity to make themselves aware of areas of potential risk, and to assess for themselves how they handle that risk.

Objectives

This metric aims to help event organizers present to event attendees and to track, over time, the health risks of an event, by documenting and cataloging public health measures taken by the organizing team. Ultimately, this aims to empower event attendees to make the right decision for them on whether the event is inclusive to their needs.

Implementation

This metric has two components. First, an event organizer needs to decide on public health policies for the event, which is addressed by the list below. Second, those policies need to be communicated to event attendees, which is addressed by the data collection strategies below.

Here are things to look for in an event’s public health policies:

• Requiring proof of vaccinations for all event attendees, staff, volunteers, speakers, and exhibitors
• Requiring negative COVID test results for all event attendees, staff, volunteers, speakers, and exhibitors
• Requiring masks in all indoor spaces
• Making masks available to event attendees, staff, volunteers, speakers, and exhibitors
• Monitoring or surveying attendees daily for signs of illness
• Providing hand sanitizer stations throughout the venue
• Providing information about venue ventilation
• Providing information about vaccination and masking policies for venue staff
• Providing room setups with adequate space between chairs
• Providing information about local COVID community spread, if available
• Allowing attendees, speakers, and exhibitors to indicate a no-touch preference (no handshakes, hugs, or fistbumps)
• Providing information about the venue’s sanitizing and cleaning policies
• Providing number of expected attendees and the venue square footage
• Providing links to the state and city mandated health or COVID policies

Here are things to look for in what an event communicates about their public health policies:

• Masking
• Testing
• Vaccines
• Indoor air quality
• Alternative modes of participation
• Refunds
• Filters
• Global locations of events

Tools Providing the Metric

• Public Health Pledge Event Badging Standard (https://phpledge.com/badging)

Data Collection Strategies

There are several different ways event organizers provide information about their public health policies and we can collect data from there:

• Public Health Pledge event assessments page
• Event registration form
• Event speaker proposal flow
• Event Health and Safety / COVID-19 / Public Health / On-site Safety page
• Event web page

References

• Public Health Pledge
• CDC: Understanding Your Risk
• CDC: Map of Community Spread
• Eventbrite’s COVID-19 Safety Playbook for Events
• Conferences that Work blog post: Standards for safer events

Known Contributors

• Joshua Simmons
• Elizabeth Barron
• Matt Germonprez
• Georg Link

This metric was last reviewed on February 25, 2023 as part of the continuous release process.

The usage and dissemination of health metrics may lead to privacy violations. Organizations may be exposed to risks. These risks may flow from compliance with the GDPR in the EU, with state law in the US, or with other laws. There may also be contractual risks flowing from terms of service for data providers such as GitHub and GitLab. The usage of metrics must be examined for risk and potential data ethics problems. Please see CHAOSS Data Ethics document for additional guidance.