In a recent online discussion that focused on public health’s critical role in COVID-19 response, Dean Amy Fairchild put matters into perspective.
Public health is “the front lines out in front of the front lines,” she told an audience of invited guests during the third in a webinar series from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center entitled COVID 19: From the Front Lines.
Fairchild and Elisabeth Root, an associate professor of epidemiology and geography in Ohio State’s colleges of Public Health and Arts and Sciences, offered public health perspectives on issues including historic health inequities worsened by the pandemic, the value of wearing a mask in public and the challenges of balancing economic concerns against potential lives lost.
“Human life is valuable — highly valuable. Perhaps the most valuable thing we have,” said Root, who has been serving as an advisor to state leadership during Ohio’s pandemic response.
Peter Mohler, the medical center’s chief scientific officer and director of the Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute, was also part of the moderated discussion.
