epidemiology

Debunking current COVID myths

Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, myths about the virus have run rampant. Many of those myths have been petrifying and even dangerous, so having the actual facts in front of you is crucial for clarity and peace of mind.

Luckily, we have Dr. Bill Miller of Ohio State’s College of Public Health here to help us debunk, demystify and detangle the current myths around the virus, vaccines, testing and masks.

So without further ado, let’s let Dr. Miller clear up seven of the current COVID-19 myths:

Vaping could nearly triple the chance of smoking in teens

A new study offers strong evidence that kids who use e-cigarettes are more likely to take up smoking or smokeless tobacco, researchers say. 

Teen boys who vaped were almost three times as likely to start smoking as other teen boys with similar risk profiles and more than two times as likely to try smokeless tobacco, the study from The Ohio State University found. The research was published online this week in the journal Addictive Behaviors. 

Predictive modeling, data curation helps guide state in COVID-19 response

**Editor's Note: CovidCommons is now live and available for researchers here.**

With a dissertation on building models for influenza pandemics and years of experience working with health departments on complex public health problems, Ayaz Hyder was about as prepared as you could be to meet the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Get to Know: Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson

What made you decide to come to The Ohio State University?

I am originally from Detroit where there's a very striking racial disparity in preterm birth, the adverse birth outcome on which I focus. I found that Columbus’s preterm birth outcome is one of the worse in the country. There were no social epidemiologists here at Ohio State and the potential to create a social epidemiology class was appealing because a lot of students haven't been exposed to the subject discipline of social epidemiology which merges sociology and epidemiology together.

Quality is an 'afterthought' in the campaign for health care access, report finds

Associate professor of epidemiology Marcel Yotebieng, MD, MPH, PhD, alongside 13 other experts in the field, co-authored a report released in August by the National Academy of Medicine.

The report, titled “Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving health care worldwide,” describes a need for the public health community to shift their focus from strictly providing access to health services to instead providing high-quality, effective health care.

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