by JP Leider and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field Minnesota has been in the news in recent months, for all the wrong reasons. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in the midst of a seemingly uncontrollable COVID-19 pandemic again shone a light on the tremendous disparities and inequities present in the state. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, noted
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by Dawn Carmen Sibor I have spent more than 25 years working in local public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Officer Association (MHOA), where I oversee an organization with 600+ members, including staff from 300 of the 351 health departments in the state. For much of this time, I
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by Herbert C. Duber, MD, MPH COVID-19 presents challenges to many vulnerable and underserved communities. This is particularly true of individuals living homeless, a population that faces unique challenge to disease mitigation, testing and disease management. King County, WA, which includes Seattle, experienced the first outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. With more than 11,000 individuals experiencing homelessness, approximately
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by Sheryl Monks The race to find a cure for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is heating up around the world as countries battle to see which one can produce a winner first. While Russia announced it has a vaccine that it expects to be approved this month that it plans to administer in a mass vaccination campaign in
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by Chrissie Juliano, MPP This post originally appeared on the Front Lines Blog and is republished here with permission from the Big Cities Health Coalition. I am a lifelong baseball fan. I have vivid memories of game 6 of the 1986 World Series as a young New York Mets fan. My move as an adult to DC coincided with the return of baseball to the city and a renewed love for the game. My family attended Nationals games at RFK, the first game at the then-new Nats Park, and the all-star festivities (where my
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by Ruby Barnard-Mayers, MPH The COVID-19 pandemic spread to the United States during my last semester at the Boston University School of Public Health. By March of 2020, I was working full-time from my apartment at the time, taking all my classes online, and I hadn’t been outside for days. My parents in Vermont, less than 200 miles away, continued
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by Christopher P. Morley, PhD In the late Winter and Spring of 2020, the novel coronavirus, SARS-COV-2, which causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), began to appear on both coasts of the United States, beginning in Seattle in February, and in New York State and other eastern cities in March. Genomic analyses revealed a two-pronged viral assault, with cases in the
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by JP Leider, PhD Before 2020, before COVID, I think I may be received two or three media calls, ever, on public health funding. At this point, I and colleagues have published a couple dozen articles on the dearth of and underinvestment in public health funding. But not a lot of media interest. Now, admittedly, that’s maybe more a reflection
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by Ilana Cliffer I relish any opportunity to apply knowledge gained throughout my studies in public health to resolve a real-world conundrum. When I learned that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading rapidly within our country and that it could overwhelm our health systems, I admittedly became obsessed. I read every pre-print that came out, whipped up my own spreadsheets to track the
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by Molly Gutilla, DrPH, MS Public Health Pracademics explores the intersection between academia and practice with an eye toward recognizing those already bridging this gap and encouraging others to embrace efforts to link science and practice. With all that we have to work on right now, from racism to COVID-19, and the intersection of these two, I can hardly think
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