Global Health Career Week, in collaboration with the School of Public Health, concluded with a Q&A panel on protecting public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. This live Zoom event provided participants with an opportunity to ask questions to our panel of experts.
Researchers have been studying COVID-19 in homeless communities, specifically in shelters with two or more confirmed cases in the weeks prior to their study. They found that in these shelters with clusters of cases, the proportion of positive tests was higher than in shelters with lower amounts of previously reported cases.
By John Lynch (MPH '11) and Karin Huster (MPH '13)
As we swiftly surpass 100,000 cases and 4,000 deaths globally, every one of us is understandably rattled and may be asking, will I be next? Will I get infected with COVID-19? Will I end up in the hospital? Will it kill me, my family or friends?
HONG KONG — It’s been hard to be far away from home, watching a pandemic of panic over the new coronavirus ripple across the world.
A month ago I left Seattle for Hong Kong — a city of 7.3 million bordering mainland China and one of the planet’s most densely populated — as part of a Doctors Without Borders effort to rein in the widespread fear gripping the city as it began to wrestle with a virus the world knew little about.
That fear has now reached home.
Karin Huster encounters death up close, and repeatedly.
She has seen babies perish in their mothers’ arms. She has watched people grieve as their loved ones were buried in white body bags drenched in bleach. She has survived a clinic where she worked being attacked, burned and shot at.
“It’s the best job in the world,” she says. “And I don’t mean this lightly.”
The global health community needs the humility to acknowledge that we have failed once again in an Ebola epidemic, say Karin Huster and Justin Healy
Before reaching her current position of Field Coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, Karin Huster was a Registered Nurse and an MPH student at the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health. Working alongside professors , Huster gathered a multitude of skills that she’s used to advance her career. In addition to her wide-ranging field work, Huster is a regular writer and contributor to radio shows and podcasts.
By Karin Huster, MPH ('14)
This month marks two years since the first Ebola cases were confirmed in Guinea. The time has come for recollection and reflection, frank opinions and lessons learned. What did we do well? What should we have done differently? What has Ebola taught us? I spent 6 weeks in Liberia, 4 1/2 months in Sierra Leone, and 6 months in Guinea during the epidemic, working with Ebola patients and focusing on strategies to fight the disease. These thoughts come from the experiences that I had working in the field.