College of Public Health

News Story

H1N1 outbreak offers teachable moment for professors

Posted 05/01/2009

Faculty in the College of Public Health are using the current H1N1 influenza outbreak to bring some lessons home for their students.

A few of the classes being taught this quarter include:

• Assessing exposures to things that may harm or improve health
• Infectious diseases in the developing world
• The role of health behavior in public health
• Water and risks to human health

Randi Love, PhD, clinical associate professor in the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion, teaches an undergraduate class on the role of health behavior in public health. She had her students participate in an exercise in which they had to manage an outbreak of H1N1 on the Ohio State campus.

"My slides and case study might seem alarmist, so I spent a lot of time on prevention and made sure they understood that the response on the part of public health has been rapid and comprehensive. The case study deals with a 'worst case scenario,' but public health has to think in those terms to be ready," Love said.

Song Liang, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, teaches a graduate level class on risk assessment, which is a way of analyzing information from a variety of sources so you can assess the real human health risk from exposure to various things.

"The students were asking about effective prevention measures, how this compares to the 1918 flu epidemic, and how this outbreak differs from other types of infection outbreaks like SARS," said Liang.

In the class on Infectious Diseases in the Developing World, Associate Professor Kurt Stevenson, MD, MPH, used the outbreak as a case study to teach students how viruses cause infections, how the virus transmits regardless of borders, and the history of pandemics. PhD student Eric Lutz enjoyed the opportunity to pull the real world into the classroom.

"This class discussion underscored for me the synergy between infectious disease epidemiology and environmental health science that must exist to successfully respond to these types of outbreaks," said Lutz.

Certainly, many of the classes use current events to amplify lectures and readings. While the faculty don't wish for a disease outbreak, they can use it to educate students who will be our future public health practitioners.

"The occurrence of any infectious disease outbreak is always unfortunate and sad, like this one. Meanwhile, it also provides a great opportunity for us to explore and learn," said Liang.

 

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The Ohio State University's College Public Health is an integral part of the most comprehensive health sciences campus in the nation. The college was created in February 2007 by the University Board of Trustees. First established in 1995 as part of the College of Medicine, we are the first and only accredited school of public health in the state of Ohio. Specializations within the college include biostatistics, epidemiology, health behavior and health promotion, environmental health sciences, health services management and policy, veterinary public health and clinical investigations. The college is currently ranked 21st in public health graduate schools by US News & World Report. Its Master of Health Administration program is ranked 12th.