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Homelessness in the time of Coronavirus

In this episode, we talked with Barbara Brush, a Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health and an expert on homelessness and health about the hardships people experiencing homelessness encounter daily during this pandemic. We also spoke with Linda Little, President and CEO of the Neighborhood Service Organization which provides shelter and support to thousands of people in Metro Detroit each year about how coronavirus has impacted how they provide care to the people who need it.

illustration of the COVID-19 coronavirus

Coronavirus and Food Access: How the Pandemic Impacts Food Insecurity

There are nearly 40 million Americans, including 11 million children, who are food insecure. That means, they don't have reliable, consistent access to the nutritious, quality food they need to lead healthy lives. With growing pressure on the food supply chain, and tens of millions of Americans now out of work, the coronavirus pandemic could cause that 40 million to climb. Cindy Leung and Susan Aaronson, Nutritional Sciences faculty at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, talk about the ways COVID-19 is impacting those experiencing food insecurity, and how community and government organizations are adapting to serve those in need.

illustration of the COVID-19 coronavirus

Public Health Surveillance: Immunity, Testing, and Contact Tracing

Long before we could sequence a virus’s genome in a matter of weeks, we used public health tactics like contact tracing to sort out the movement of a disease in a population. Contact tracing is one of the “traditional” tools of epidemiologists—an epidemiologist calls up dozens or even hundreds of people who might have had contact with an infected person. By tracking these interactions, they can understand how a disease is making its way through a population. Today, we have more public health surveillance tools at our disposal, but we still have a lot of work to do before we fully understand how this new coronavirus behaves and what it means to have immunity to it. Abram Wagner is research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. We asked him to cover some basics of how we monitor a disease outbreak—from how we test for it to how long we might have immunity to it after an infection.

illustration of the COVID-19 coronavirus

The Impact of Social Distancing on Older Adults

People over the age of 65 are at higher risk for complications and death from COVID-19. But that’s not the only way this pandemic is disproportionately impacting older adults. Social distancing and other pandemic control strategies can take a particular toll on older individuals, some of whom don’t have access to or experience with the technologies like FaceTime and Zoom that are helping many people feel connected in this time. Lindsay Kobayashi, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, talks about her new study that looks at the impact of social distancing on older adults and discusses how we can help the older individuals in our families and communities cope during this time.

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Social Distancing 2.0: A New Normal

We are all getting antsy, wondering when we can return to work, see our friends and family in person, and get back to some sense of normal. Meanwhile, we might notice a planned temporary hospital wasn’t built or that some data on the local news seems to show a reduction in the spread of coronavirus. What are we supposed to do with these emerging shades of gray in a situation that felt so black and white not too long ago? In this episode, Abram Wagner, research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, helps us think through these questions.

illustration of the COVID-19 coronavirus

Coronavirus Hits Home: How the Pandemic Impacts Housing and Health

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been damaging to the economy, and now many are finding that it’s also intensifying the existing shortcomings of housing and health in the United States as about 22 million people have lost their main sources of income. There’s also an even greater risk of spread of COVID-19 for those who don’t have the ability to “stay at home”. In this episode, Roshanak Mehdipanah, an assistant professor of Health Behavior and Health Educations at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, explains how the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic is spreading further than the disease is transmitted and how federal aid for housing support may not be enough to prevent negative outcomes in housing for years to come.