A note from Interim Dean Karla Zadnik

Public health truly is everywhere. 

I knew something about the breadth of public health’s reach coming into my interim dean role, having spent decades on prevention work aimed at understanding and preventing nearsightedness — work that is clearly about optometry, my primary discipline, but is, at its core, about public health. 

After spending four months in Cunz Hall, I have an even deeper appreciation of the ways in which our public health and health care administration alumni, scholars, and students are bringing their expertise to bear in multiple disciplines and arenas.

This semester’s digital magazine further highlights the far-reaching nature of public health. It is chock full of stories about terrific public health and health care practitioners and students, and I recommend you read them all. But I’ll offer a few highlights:

• Who knew that public health would take College of Public Health biostatistics PhD student Micaela Smith to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the setting for last summer’s blockbuster “Oppenheimer”? I encourage you to read about her adventure as part of the lab’s data analytics group.
• The real-world experiences and potential for impact aren’t limited to the college’s graduate students: BSPH student Alex Ochoa spent his summer in the nation’s capital, gaining policy experience in the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. 
• Our alumni are also making a difference far and wide. In this issue, we learn about Rachel Hardin ’16 BSPH and her work to help more central Ohioans find safe, affordable housing through her job at Habitat for Humanity-MidOhio.
• I was also fascinated by the experiences of alumni of the combined BSPH-MPH program, including Carra Gilson ’19 BSPH, ’20 MPH, who is working to improve the lives of moms and babies in Colorado, and Paul Zivich ’15 BSPH, ’16 MPH, who is investigating how to better prevent HIV infection through the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

I hope you enjoy learning about these members of your CPH community and many more in this fall’s issue of the College of Public Health Magazine!

Go Buckeyes,

Karla