Quad Cities COVID-19 Coalition wins Business of the Year 

The Quad Cities Chamber congratulates the Quad Cities COVID-19 Coalition on being honored as the Chamber’s 2021 Business of the Year. The award recognizes the contributions of the dozens of Quad Cities city and county governments; public health entities; health care providers; emergency operations; faith-based organizations; nonprofit and private organizations; schools and education partners; and businesses who came together to protect our community during the pandemic. 

The award was presented at the Chamber’s Annual Meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 11, at Rhythm City Casino Resort. Accepting the award on behalf of the full Coalition were seven of the participating organizations: Scott and Rock Island County Emergency Management Agencies, Rock Island and Scott County Health Departments, Community Health Care, Genesis Health System and UnityPoint Health – Trinity.

The Coalition, which spanned the river and local borders, was honored for the critical role it played in keeping our community safe. The collective group united and collaborated in the face of the pandemic to deliver the accurate, up-to-date information and resources that our region’s businesses, organizations and residents desperately needed to make critical decisions in their workplaces, lives and in the community. 

“I think it’s a testament to what we do here, how people in the Quad Cities deal with these kinds of events,” Dave Donovan, Director of the Scott County Emergency Management Agency, said of the recognition. “It shows you can work on your individual interests but you can work on them in the context of the community’s overall interest.”  

Donovan, who facilitated the bi-state group, said the Coalition grew out of conversations between the health departments, emergency management agencies and hospitals about creating an incident command to respond to COVID-19. “We’d been talking about opening an emergency operations center, which is typical in this type of situation, much like we did with the H1N1 flu. But we knew this looked a little different.”

He credited Dr. Louis Katz, Medical Director for the Scott County Health Department, and Chamber President and CEO Paul Rumler with organizing what became the Coalition’s inaugural meeting. “There was a lot of work to be done to be prepared – this was even before we had cases. Dr. Katz was telling us ‘it’s here. We just haven’t tested someone who’s positive yet.’” 

Donovan said the Coalition’s task “was a little daunting in the beginning, but we knew we had the right key people in the beginning and we knew it would build.” The group met multiple times a week initially on Zoom calls before settling into weekly, virtual meetings with more than 100 stakeholders per call and updates from all the participants including the health departments, healthcare providers and other emergency leaders. In fact, after more than 180 meetings of Coalition since March, 2020, he said the group thought its meeting last month might be its last but with COVID-19 transmission rates spiking again the group continues to keep updated and provide information for the partners to disseminate. 

Donovan praised the Public Information Officers from the various groups for delivering valuable information to their constituencies and to the masses. “It was not just the messaging, but the fact that the approach changed over time," Donovan said. 

Rumler, the Chamber’s top executive, said the business community, as well as the broader Quad Cities region, relied on the information gathered and shared by the Coalition's cross-section of partners. “There was a period when there was a lot of information flowing. Meetings were happening sometimes daily to vet through all the topics. The Coalition helped the Chamber do our job of communicating and keeping our members informed. It was a demonstration of great regionalism,” Rumler said. 

The Coalition also had to navigate differences in the two states’ approaches and accurately communicate the differences. “In our Quad Cities way, we dropped the borders and talked solutions and made sure we were providing great resources,” Rumler said of the Coalition's efforts.  

Donovan described the Coalition as "the largest grouping of Quad Cities stakeholders" ever convened. “That’s because everybody had a stake in this,” Donovan said. “In the case of a flood, it’s a much smaller population affected than this was. But with this, everyone had skin in the game. In the end, it was pretty darn effective.”