On Sept. 9, CORE – Community Organized Relief Effort, the emergency relief nonprofit organization co-founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee – announced it is offering private, for-profit COVID-19 testing services to film and television productions. CORE uses the profits from the private testing to help fund free COVID-19 testing for at-risk and low-income communities, with 100% of the net profits supporting the organization’s community testing programs. The organization is launching this effort with testing for Los Angeles-based productions, with plans to expand services to other production hubs in the U.S.

CORE is offering private testing to productions first because they are highly contained and close-knit communities, and contact tracing and isolation wraparound support are natural extensions.

This gives the organization an opportunity to develop best practices that can be applied later at a larger public scale. 

“We are eager to offer private testing to film and television productions to not only help fund CORE’s programs that help vulnerable and underserved communities, but also to fortify California’s economy. Enabling production companies to safely resume projects with testing will bring back thousands of film and television jobs to Los Angeles, and that’s a critical next step for restoring life in our city,” Penn said.

Due to the lack of government funding for COVID-19 testing and relief, CORE operations have been mostly dependent on private donations to fund free testing for vulnerable communities. To date, CORE has administered more than 1.5 million free tests.

The private testing model will also allow CORE to fund and expand its CORE 8 initiative, an integrated approach to COVID-19 relief that combines testing with wraparound services and contact tracing.

The CORE 8 outlines four actions for the government and four actions for citizens to defend communities from COVID-19. For the government, CORE is calling for increased testing capacity with results returned in 48 hours, contact tracing established within 72 hours of receiving a positive test result, wraparound services for vulnerable communities, and fact-based and science-backed public information. For citizens, CORE is asking individuals to practice self-isolation, wear masks, social distance, and share accurate and science-backed information.

“We have expanded to private testing to help offset the amount of funding necessary to continue offering free testing and critical relief services for vulnerable communities who have been significantly – and disproportionately – impacted by the pandemic. We could no longer wait for government agencies to respond by providing additional funding and support. This is a small step towards securing funds to keep our nonprofit operations afloat,” Lee said.

For information, email productiontesting@coreresponse.org or visit coreresponse.org/covid19.