Public Health News
Public Health helps to Develop COVID-19 Symptom Tracking App
From a SU News story by Alex Dunbar, originally published on April 28, 2020
Six students from the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) saw a problem they could help solve. As hospitals and the health care system work to handle the influx of COVID-19 cases, many people who are diagnosed with the virus are advised to quarantine at home and monitor their own symptoms. Health care professionals check-in with patients at home to determine if their condition is improving or getting worse. For some patients, this leads to anxiety and uncertainty if they should be taken to a hospital or continue isolating at home.
Lane and Rubinstein have been supporting interdisciplinary student research in the Syracuse community for 15 years through Lane’s Community Action Research and Education (CARE) program. Lane is also a research professor at Upstate Medical University and saw the potential of where a symptom tracking app could go.
“This project opens so many possibilities,” says Lane.
Knowing what doctors and nurses wanted to know about patients was just one part of building questions for the symptom tracking app. The team reached out to two friends of Lindgren who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and were taking calls from health care workers while quarantined at home.
“I called both of them and asked what questions people had been asking them,” says Lindgren. “They gave us the questions health care workers had been asking them about shortness of breath and other issues.”
The conversations with actual patients guided the project’s direction as it moved forward.
“It helped a lot with unique symptoms, things we didn’t think about,” says Lindgren. “They also said they would prefer to use a web app than take a phone call.”
Lane and Rubinstein were also helpful in finding how to formulate questions to patients so the app being developed could be more effective.
Learn more by reading the full story.
Human development, addictions studies are the base for Falk senior’s social work career
In her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, senior Rachel Brennan ’20 was encouraged to join the Orange family when she heard alumni talk about their time at Syracuse University. The academic disciplines in Falk College convinced Brennan that Syracuse University was the place for her. “I remember sitting at an informational meeting about the College and thinking that I was interested in every single major offered,” she adds.
As a senior human development and family science major with a minor in addiction studies, Brennan’s time at Syracuse University has given her exciting experiences both far and near—from study abroad in Sydney, Australia at the University of New South Wales, to a summer internship at Yale University’s Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH).
Brennan, who plans to pursue a Master of Social Work degree and a career in social work, originally enrolled as a social work major. But she discovered a different path to graduate school. “After reading the courses offered in Human Development and Family Science (HDFS), I decided to switch my major. I believed the HDFS courses would give me a great foundation in understanding theory and practice when working with children and families that I could then apply to my social work graduate study and field placement,” explains Brennan.
Following her gut helped Brennan discover a passion for research, inspired by her coursework. “I was interested in researching the current opioid crisis after taking multiple courses focused on drug use,” she says. “I had gained a concrete understanding on the impact substances have on the brain through my rigorous courses, and I was drawn to learning more about the impact using opioids can have on an individual’s personal life and overall emotional wellbeing.”
As an intern in the PRCH, Brennan interviewed individuals recovering from opioid addictions. The study examined the effectiveness of different treatments for substance use disorders provided Connecticut Department of Mental Health. “The interview packet was extensive and asked personal questions about how their addiction took form, if they have co-occurring disorders, and if their substance use impacted relationships with their loved ones,” Brennan explains.
“Working hands-on with people struggling with substance use disorders was a powerful experience and I hope to continue researching the impact of addiction on children and families throughout my graduate studies and future career,” Brennan adds.
After graduation, Brennan plans to pursue a Master of Social Work following a clinical track. “I hope to work in out-patient mental health clinics while working towards my LCSW,” she says. “My end goal is to eventually have my own private therapy practice where I work with children and families impacted by addiction and other traumatic experiences.”
Public health senior studied abroad three times, worked with students in South Africa
By Emma Henzes ’20
Caitlin Mogan ’20 tailored her college experience to be colored with travel opportunities. Her three study abroad experiences included a semester abroad and two summer programs.
“It was out of the ordinary to study abroad three times, but it’s definitely doable,” Mogan says.
As a public health major, Mogan went to South Africa to fulfill her global health education experience credit. She previously had experiential learning from her classes and activities on the Syracuse University campus volunteering at St. Joseph’s hospital, working with refugee families with the Syracuse-area Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) and assistant teaching in an English as a Second Language course.
“The South Africa program was really great,” Mogan says. “It gave me a lot of leadership experience because we do a lot of experiential learning in public health.”
Falk students on the South Africa Immersion Trip participate in implementing a program benefitting local community groups in Makhanda, Eastern Cape of South Africa. Mogan loved this option because she personalized her experiential credit, mutually-designing a program with community experts. Her group chose to lead a drug awareness program due to the needs of the Makhanda community they were helping. She designed curriculum and educated Makhandan secondary students about drug issues their community faced.
Mogan’s time abroad in Makhanda provided insight into what she could potentially do in the future after graduation. After her rewarding experience teaching the South African students and seeing how they learned, Caitlin wants to work in an educational setting.
Mogan began her college experience at Syracuse’s campus in Madrid, Spain as a Discovery Program student. She then spent her summer going into her sophomore year at Syracuse’s Florence, Italy program. She loved the classes that the Florence campus offered, taking art history and photography classes.
“I have no idea what I want to do and the only way I’m going to figure it out is if I see everything I can see, so that’s why I want to go to as many places as I can,” she says. “That’s ultimately why I chose public health because of the experiential credit that allows you to try many different things.” Public health prepares students to pursue a wide range of careers that promote the health of communities all over the world, from clinical health and health care administration, to law and policy, to disaster prevention and response.
“I really like to see how other people live, the challenges other people face, and the successes they have because we can learn so much from that,” says Mogan.
Hands-On Learning Experiences for Students Create Positive Change in Community
By Emma Henzes ’20
The Community Health Promotion (HWT 221) course offers students the opportunity to take a hands-on role in community-based health promotion and illness prevention through service-learning. In Falk College’s Department of Public Health, service-learning is a primary curriculum focus, placing students in the community to apply the skills they’ve learned in class.
For the HWT 221 class taught by associate teaching professor and family nurse practitioner, Lisa Olson-Gugerty, her clinical experience offers insight into human and health behavior, the public’s general understanding of disease and healthcare as well as how the public uses the health care system. She provides students with an up-to-date perspective on policy changes and procedural changes because she is actually experiencing those changes at work.
Olson-Gugerty’s connections in the community help give her students opportunities to get hands-on experience in the public health field, ranging in different organizations such as the Red Cross, Hendrick’s Food Pantry and the Office of Energy and Sustainability Management on campus. Olson-Gugerty tells her students all activity, no matter how small or big can make a positive impact in a community.
“I want them to walk away with a sense of ability that they can make a change. That their individual actions within the community can make positive change. There are opportunities to make changes that they see as beneficial and that their one small observation can be translated into a community movement or approach, which is particular to this course. I want them to know that public health is dynamic, it’s important, it’s in their everyday life and without it, they wouldn’t be given the opportunities to live as well as we do right now.”
Paige Lord, a public health major, had the opportunity to work with the American Cancer Society: Relay for Life in Professor Olson-Gugerty’s HTW 221 course. Her group promoted and fundraised Relay for Life on the Syracuse University campus. Paige learned about different types of cancer, but more importantly, how many groups are affected by cancer and need aid. Paige says HTW 221 was one of her favorite classes because of Professor Olson-Gugerty’s passion for public health going beyond just the course material and relating it to students’ lives.
“One of my favorite things that Professor Olson did was how she would always share opportunities around campus to get involved in various clubs, organizations, and internships,” Lord says. “She would always encourage us to sign up for new clubs and find hobbies beyond our school work. She is always there for office hours and is one of the most supportive teachers I have had at Syracuse University. She makes me feel like I can accomplish anything if I put my mind to it.”
Professor Olson-Gugerty, known fondly as Professor OG, says she is constantly learning from her students: how they perceive the world, what influences their thoughts, how they think of public health, what they think makes them healthy and sick. She finds generational differences in word usage and approaches in healthcare that helps her stay current as a professor and nurse practitioner.
Public Health Runs in the Family
When Cate Willing has questions about public health issues, she can consult with any of her professors at Syracuse University, where she’s studying public health at Falk College and policy studies at the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences. But since her sophomore year on campus was cut short by the novel coronavirus pandemic, she’s been consulting with another knowledgeable source at her home in McLean, Virginia: Jayne O’Donnell, her mother. O’Donnell is the health care policy reporter for USA Today. She is also an author, TV contributor, freelance writer, and co-founder of the Urban Health Media Project, which trains high school students to report on health and social issues that are often overlooked in marginalized communities.
“It has all been surreal,” Willing says about the pandemic that forced Syracuse University to end on-campus classes, send students home and transition to online teaching and learning. “We were following the virus overseas and not feeling the direct impact on people and their lives, and then within a month we’re all home in isolation. I think my friends and I assumed that we would be out of school for three weeks or so and then return to finish the semester on campus.”
Technology allows life to remain manageable, both academically and socially. “Completing my classes online isn’t easier or more difficult, it’s just different,” Willing says. “None of my classes are conducted in Zoom. Instead, my professors have recorded their voices talking over PowerPoints. I prefer that because they are all stored for constant access through Blackboard. I’m keeping up with my friends from school, too. We text and FaceTime almost daily.”
An Informed Perspective
Being a public health major helped Willing readily grasp the significance of the pandemic. “I understood more about how viruses spread, and my classes have covered the travel warnings that are implemented in a pandemic, so I was able to decode those fairly well,” Willing says. “I think that my generation has shifted from kind of dismissing the virus to now following regulations and practicing social distancing rigorously. I was getting a lot of information from my mother, who was reporting on it, and that combined with my public health background made it seem more serious from the start.”
Willing imagines her future options as a public health professional. “If I were to play a role in combatting the pandemic, it would be to help those who are struggling through isolation and make a plan for when the social distancing is over,” she says. “How can we best acclimate to the world we will meet on the other side of this pandemic?”
Willing’s mother also believes that the major fallout from the pandemic will be from issues surrounding mental health. “My biggest fear is how it’s going to compound all the other public health problems I’ve been writing about, like mental illness, isolation, loneliness, addiction, child abuse and domestic violence,” O’Donnell says. “I moderated a webinar with NYU global health professors recently, and we talked about what an important field public health is right now. It’s going to be a growth field. Cate’s curriculum at Syracuse University is great, and I like the program’s strong focus on community solutions to public health issues.”
Expanding Learning Opportunities
In addition to mirroring her mother’s interest in public health, Willing also works hard to communicate public health issues to her community at Syracuse University. She’s found the perfect vehicle for that pursuit at Falk College. During their first semester at Syracuse University, many public health students take a Healthy You Practicum (PHP 227) under the direction of Falk professor of practice Luvenia Cowart. The one-credit class introduces them to Healthy You, a health news magazine published by the students themselves to promote healthier behaviors on campus and in the community. A partnership of the Falk College public health program and the Division of Student Affairs, the magazine embraces cross-campus collaboration by also serving students at other higher education institutions in Central New York. The students explore topics and develop skills in magazine writing, illustration, photography, and layout and design.
“I was editor-in-chief of my high school’s newspaper, so I reached out to Professor Cowart to express my interest,” Willing says. “I wrote for the magazine my freshman year, became copy editor and now I am student managing editor. I’ve been working with her in the classroom this year, teaching journalistic writing and conducting topic selection for the articles. As the magazine’s sole student editor, I meet with student writers to go over their articles and prepare them for publication.” Classroom instruction runs for six weeks and then transitions to online communication with the students, so there’s been little disruption during the pandemic. “Cate is an absolute perfect fit as a role model for students interested in exploring their health-writing abilities and developing leadership skills,” Cowart says.
Cowart believes that offering Willing the student managing editor position was one of her best administrative decisions ever. “A critical thinker, she is focused and well-rounded as she engages the student editorial board and faculty and staff campus collaborators. Her visionary perspective, creativity and initiative make an invaluable contribution to the planning, development and production processes of the newsmagazine,” Cowart says. “Cate was born to lead.”
Learn more about the public health program
2020 Falk College Scholars Announced
Falk College Scholars from the Class of 2020 represent undergraduate students in the College who display academic excellence, exceptional campus and community engagement, independent research and creative work, evidence of intellectual growth and/or innovation in their disciplinary field, and personal integrity.
“Congratulations to our students named Falk College Scholars. Their outstanding accomplishments exemplify academic excellence, creativity, personal achievement and commitment to the campus and local communities, and they are exceptional role models for their peers,” says senior associate dean of academic affairs, Eileen Lantier.
The Falk Scholars from the Class of 2020 include:
April M Hill, Nutrition
Alizee Mclorg, Public Health
Bijal Patel, Public Health
Connor David Monzo, Sport Management
Brandon M Pollack, Sport Management
Nicholas Richard Riccardi, Sport Analytics
Alexandra Tulowiecki, Social Work
“The combination of their outstanding academic accomplishments and dedication to sharing knowledge and experiences outside of the classroom to engage the world represents what Falk College is all about: social responsibility, social justice and service to others,” adds Falk Dean, Diane Lyden Murphy.
Epidemiologist Offers Guidelines for Flattening the Curve
A Syracuse University Story by Jay Cox originally published on April 7, 2020.
When David Larsen first learned of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, he hoped it would be contained. Larsen, an environmental epidemiologist and associate professor of public health at Falk College, says that region of the world had previously experienced SARS-1 and MERS epidemics, so the health care system was ready to help battle the COVID-19 spread.
COVID-19 is less deadly than either of those viruses, but more contagious, Larsen says. The coronavirus has now ravaged populations worldwide, and North America’s first confirmed case appeared in Washington in late January. “When scientists in Washington showed that two cases of COVID-19 were genetically identical—and they were a month apart—that’s when I realized it would be bad,” Larsen says. “The acceleration of this growth surprised me, but it won’t surprise me anymore.”
As we grapple with the pandemic, Larsen urges people to follow recommended public health guidelines to help break chains of transmission and flatten the curve of communal spread. He responds to our questions about the new disease, offering insights on the virus and how, both as individuals and a society, we can work together in our attempt to control it.
How threatening is the virus because of its ability to spread so rapidly?
The first death in the U.S. was February 27. By March 27, there were 1,000 deaths, and by March 29, we had 2,000 deaths. This acceleration is hard to understand until you’re actually seeing it that big, that fast. It’s twice as infectious as influenza. Because the pathogen is so contagious, it’s dangerous in its spread, and our world is so connected.
When the U.S. government placed the travel ban for China, it was too late—the virus had already escaped and been seeded throughout Europe and the U.S. That happened early and surprised a lot of people.
Why is it important to wear a face mask?
The entire country should be wearing face masks in public to help reduce transmission of the coronavirus. If we get enough people wearing masks, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people will reduce the infected droplets coming from them when they talk and breathe. There’s also evidence a mask provides some personal protection, so it’s both a personal protection and a community protection intervention.
We need to bring anything that can work to the fight, and face masks may help. There are no randomized studies to rely on to guide our interventions. But evidence from historical studies, filtration experiments and observational studies suggests that when the entire community wears face masks in public, the transmission of respiratory infections will decrease.
The caveat is that we also have a huge shortage of face masks for the health care workers. Nobody should be wearing a medical-grade mask in public unless they’re super high risk. It should be a homemade cloth mask, even a scarf or a bandana would work better than nothing. We need to challenge the public to both sew one billion cloth face masks (free templates are available online) and wear them in public at all times. This can help further flatten the curve beyond what social distancing can achieve alone.
You’ve cited Taiwan for its comparatively low communal spread. What lessons should we learn from Taiwan’s approach?
This is the third coronavirus that Taiwan’s had to deal with in less than 20 years. They are prepared and ready to go. When we compare the U.S. response, we’re basically rookies and need to adopt their playbook. One interesting thing Taiwan does is track their citizenry quite heavily through mobile phones. If they identify one person who has the coronavirus, they can immediately alert everybody who’s been within six feet and say, “You need to go into quarantine for the next 14 days; we’ll follow up with you later.” They have been able to track people that way, including incoming travelers.
What advice do you have for families in their home environment?
If we think about social distancing, we should think about our social network. We want to have a closed social network that does not ever come into contact with the virus. But every single contact outside of that household—whether it’s through a drive-thru, a restaurant, grocery store, post office or work—comes with a probability of transmission. Once the virus gets into that closed network, it would spread through the family unit.
Along with following guidelines and being vigilant, what should we do moving forward?
The big thing we need to do is increase our surveillance—increase our capacity as a country, state and county to know where the virus is. First, we need to change the case definition. Right now, a COVID-19 case has to be diagnosed by the laboratory diagnostic. Let’s change the case definition to any viral pneumonia with unknown cause, since the majority of these cases will be COVID-19 and that will give us a truer picture of the numbers we’re facing in this country.
Second, we should include novel types of viral surveillance. In many disease systems, we use environmental surveillance to look for the virus in wastewater, in human sewage. There may be capacity for that with the coronavirus, but that needs to be a fast-track study and, if the proof of concept is there, let’s scale that across the country. Then, at a municipal level, we could establish which cities have coronavirus transmission and which don’t, instead of relying just on the cases showing up at the health center.
It’s a big learning curve for us—this is our country’s first experience with a novel deadly respiratory illness. Hopefully, what we’ve learned will help us to prepare for the next time this happens, because it will happen again, and we need to be ready for it.
New Course Prefix for Public Health Courses Effective Fall 2020
All courses offered by the Falk College Department of Public Health have a new course prefix effective Fall 2020.
Beginning Fall 2020, the existing course prefix “HTW” will no longer be used. Instead, all public health courses will use the course prefix “PHP.”
Two trips are better than one: Falk senior applies public health skills in East Africa
For Alizée McLorg ’20, public health is everywhere—from mentoring young adults in local Syracuse schools, to analyzing demographic health surveys in East Africa. Her time at Syracuse has allowed her to do both, and in the process, discover her passion for improving the health of communities around the world.
McLorg was born in Quebec City, Canada and moved to San Diego, California when she was young. Excited by the idea of going to college far from home, Syracuse University’s neuroscience program caught her attention. It was a perfect fit for her plans to go to medical school. She enrolled as a neuroscience major. But her first semester of freshman year, McLorg discovered something completely new.
As a volunteer with the Office of Engagement’s Young Scholars program, she mentored middle- and high-school students of refugee families. “This experience completely changed my path and made me passionate about working with under-served communities. I was always interested in health. So, after my freshman year, I transferred to Falk College to be a public health major.”
Now as a senior with majors in both public health and neuroscience and a minor in mathematics, McLorg reflects on her time at Syracuse University, which took her all the way to Kenya and back—twice. “All my experiences from freshman and sophomore year pushed me to study abroad in Nairobi, Kenya during Fall 2018. When I returned in Spring 2019, I was eager to start my honors capstone and was interested in returning to Kenya to do meaningful work.”
She connected with her faculty advisors in the Department of Public Health, who connected her with an internship opportunity through nearby SUNY Upstate Medical University. Along with Upstate faculty and medical students and residents, McLorg returned to Kenya in Summer 2019.
Upstate partners with the U.S. Army Medical Research Directorate-Kenya (USAMRD-K) to support its Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS). This is where McLorg focused her internship experience. “The HDSS site is located in Kombewa, Kenya, a rural community about 30 minutes outside of Kisumu and works to collect important information on the health of the population. It covers approximately 40,000 households and 140,000 individuals,” McLorg explains. “Demographic health surveys (DHS) are used all over the world and are critical to capturing accurate information about a population to create solutions to inequities and health problems.”
McLorg worked directly with the HDSS team. “I observed the collection of demographic health data and verbal autopsy data: a common method of determining cause of death in low-income countries. After observing, I helped administer surveys to health facilities to better understand the available resources.” In addition, she improved her Swahili language skills and improved her skills with DHS, a data collection format commonly used in developing countries. “I also solidified my interest in social determinants of health and reducing health disparities in low-income countries,” she adds.
A Renée Crown Honors student, McLorg’s internship was also her honors capstone, supported by a Crown-Wise Award to cover the cost of travel and living expenses. McLorg, who typically works full-time in the summer, says the Crown-Wise Award made this trip possible.
After graduation, McLorg plans to attend graduate school and use her skills in international health, implementing and evaluating public health programs for East African and refugee populations. “My experience in Kisumu helped me understand how to be effective and useful in a foreign setting and how to develop lasting relationships that lend to successful and meaningful projects. I believe this ‘boots on the ground’ work will give me better context and perspective when working in the future,” she says.
“My time in Kenya and with the Young Scholars program brought significant meaning and purpose and have helped me identify my passion for global and refugee health,” says McLorg. “Syracuse University and Falk College have given me tremendous opportunities to identify my passions and connect with like-minded individuals.”
For more information about the Department of Public Health at Syracuse University’s Falk College, visit the Falk College website.
Public health in action: Applied epidemiology students host coronavirus community forum
When Syracuse University announced on March 10 that its academic residential programs would move to online course delivery in response to the coronavirus global crisis (COVID-19), graduate students in a Falk College applied epidemiology class were finalizing details for an already-planned public forum that evening.
The idea for the Department of Public Health-sponsored coronavirus forum came out of an impromptu conversation two weeks before in HTW 668—Applied Epidemiology, taught by Professor David Larsen who specializes in the control and epidemiology of the infectious disease in lower-income countries. Many students in the class are enrolled in Falk College’s master of public health (MPH) program.
According to public health graduate student, Tim Bryant, it was during the start of a recent class that Professor Larsen asked if students had questions regarding the virus. “It proceeded to be a 20-minute question and answer session,” says Bryant. “I made a statement that if we as public health students had so many questions, I’m sure the rest of the student body did as well. And, wasn’t it our responsibility and obligation as public health professionals to inform and educate our campus community?” adds Bryant. When he asked Professor Larsen if there was a planned teach-in or open forum, Larsen said, “no, let’s make it happen!” The students scheduled the event on March 10, purposefully before Spring Break, to reach the student community.
The day after the forum was held, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus as a pandemic.
The forum was moderated by public health graduate student Pruthvi Kilaru, and began with an overview on the coronavirus presented by Professor Brittany Kmush in the Department of Public Health who specializes in infectious and global disease epidemiology. Professor David Larsen, also from Falk College’s Department of Public Health, presented on the current U.S. coronavirus situation and important next steps. Dr. Kathryn Anderson, an internal medicine physician and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Upstate Medical University where she also serves as Director of the Center for International Research in the Institute for Global Health and Translational Services, addressed the clinical aspects of COVID-19.
The three experts then joined a panel discussion with Professor Peter Bell, Syracuse University College of Law who teaches a seminar in public health law; Professor Tracey Marchese, a licensed clinical social worker who teaches in Falk College’s School of Social Work and is a clinical professor at Upstate Medical University, and; Dr. Karen Nardella, a family physician who serves as medical director for Syracuse University Health Services. Michelle Mignano, Deputy Commissioner, Onondaga County Health Department, also provided updates and information from the health department. The audience was encouraged to ask questions, including livestream users who could use the hashtag #SUCOVID-19PANEL on Twitter.
“I think I speak for many of my peers when I say that we all have a deep and abiding passion for the field we study. Being able to take concepts out of the classroom and apply them in a meaningful way highlights that,” says Bryant. “We wanted to get this done before students traveled for spring break to help protect themselves and their loved ones, their communities, and to gain and advance accurate information.”
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