Long waits for appointments, out-of-date information about health care providers and the risk of discriminatory treatment are just a few of the hurdles facing Americans seeking adequate, accessible health care. A “secret shopper” project co-led by College of Public Health Associate Professor Wendy Xu aims to quantify these challenges and expose students to research designed to better understand and, ultimately, improve health care.

Master of Public Health-Epidemiology student Rachel Saadey went into the summer thinking she might be interested in a career focused on infectious disease. Now, she’s sure of it. 

Saadey spent her summer interning with Columbus Public Health’s Office of Epidemiology where she worked on their 2022 summary of reportable diseases. The annual report summarizes data on infectious diseases that must be reported to state and local health departments, illnesses such as Lyme disease, measles and sexually transmitted infections.

JaNelle Ricks, assistant professor in the College of Public Health’s Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion, received a national award from the Society of Family Planning to support her with training and mentorship to expand her expertise in sexual and gender minority health research.

College of Public Health student Adebimpe Adelaja has been named a 2023-24 Columbus-Athens Schweitzer Fellow, the Ohio State University Office of Outreach and Engagement announced. The Schweitzer Fellows Program supports and trains emerging health-focused graduate and professional students in creating and carrying out service projects to address unmet community needs.

College of Public Health graduate students Aparna Mangadu and Nandini Rangan have been named This is Public Health ambassadors by the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH).

Mangadu is a second-year student in the MPH-environmental health sciences program and Rangan is a fourth-year BSPH/MPH-VPH combined degree student.

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.