Continuing the Conversation.
A recent School of Public Health Dean’s Seminar on COVID-19 was held, appropriately, online. With public health experts—including those on the panel—recommending physical distancing to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, the only people in the room were the speakers and a few tech and media support staff.
But 2,827 people watched live online, and hundreds more have watched the archived video since.
Measures against the pandemic have emptied campus, possibly for the rest of the semester, but the work of the SPH community continues, leaning into online tools for classes, collaboration, and convening leaders to discuss COVID-19 and other pressing public health challenges.
Starting on Thursday, March 26, SPH will host the first in a weekly, online Coronavirus Seminar Series.
This first seminar, Mental Health in a Time of Crisis, will include presentations from Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Sarah Lowe, assistant professor of public health at Yale School of Medicine; and Patricia Watson, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and senior educational specialist at the National Center for PTSD. (Register here.)
“Our core responsibility remains to generate science and scholarship, to transmit that to our students, and to be part of shaping the public health conversation” says Dean Sandro Galea.
“In a time when the world’s attention is transfixed by COVID-19, the series aims to help us stay engaged with the state-of-the-science about the evolving pandemic, provide an opportunity for our students to engage with these issues, and create a forum where we can all learn together.”
SPH is also continuing to hold its previously-scheduled seminars, fora, and symposia, all online, and free and open to the public.
First up, SPH will host the Public Health Forum—TB: The Hidden Epidemic online on World Tuberculosis Day, Tuesday, March 24. (Register here.)
Other upcoming events will cover health law, surprise medical bills, nursing, and global gun violence, all digitally.
“We are continuing to discuss other public health issues because public health, and our work, continues,” Dean Galea says. “These events continue to provide an opportunity for our community to get together, bridging physical distancing, to maintain community cohesion.”
The upcoming events are online only, but SPH’s events have long been live-streamed and recorded. As the population spends more time at home to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, perhaps with a greater interest in the work of public health than ever before, the archive of past events makes for great viewing.