Public Health Lessons of the Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract: There are at least five lessons one can draw from the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic; 1) We could have been more prepared and we need to prepare more for what comes next; 2) Public health mandates need to be enforceable; 3) Population thinking needs to be taught to the public at large to counter misinformation; 4) Exclusions from public health interventions are incompatible with public health; 5) Public health protects the right to health, it does not remove any right.
Bio: Alfredo Morabia serves as the Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Public Health (since 2015). He is currently Professor of Epidemiology at the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment at Queens College, City University of New York and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York. He is the Principal Investigator of the on-going World Trade Center-Heart cohort study (NIOSH funding), which studies the long-term health of the 9/11 2001 attack on the heart health of first responders. His expertise as a historian is in the history of scientific methods used to study populations–that is, methods in which counts and statistics play an important role to search for causes and effective interventions. His latest book, “The Public Health Approach: Population Thinking from the Black Death to COVID-19” was published on October 17, 2023 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
