SurveyForecasting the EpidemicCOVID-19 RoundtableIn the MediaWhat We're DoingVideosArticles and Manuscripts

During this global public health crisis, the UAB School of Public Health (SOPH) is striving to continue its mission: to make positive and lasting change in the public’s health. Faculty have participated in media interviews answering critical questions around coronavirus related to their areas of expertise. Investigators are exploring scientific aspects of the pandemic and have formed research working groups to increase efficiency and interdisciplinary collaboration. Others are working on important issues in the community, such as locally relevant disease modeling, guidance and training, and community support. We invite you to read more about what the UAB School of Public Health has been doing during the COVID-19 outbreak here.
Take Our Survey
We want to know how you feel about the stay-at-home order and social distancing. Please consider filling out this survey on COVID-19. It takes a little less than 10 minutes, but is really important!
Forecasting the Epidemic
SOPH faculty are leading the development of locally relevant disease modeling.
- Drs. Andrew Rucks and W. Jack Duncan are creating graphs that plot the daily path of COVID-19 in Alabama and Jefferson County (home of UAB) from mid-March to the present. The graphs show the total number of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations on any given date. The data are extracted daily at approximately 4:15 p.m. CDT from the ADPH Dashboard.
- Dr. Suzanne Judd developed a Jefferson County COVID-19 community-based disease outbreak model and provided it to the JCDH.
- Dr. Jerry McGwin has developed a model for the UAB Health System to predict the trajectory and characteristics of COVID-19 patients to aid in UAB's personnel and resource management and planning. In addition, he has developed a model to predict the trajectory and characteristics of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals in Jefferson County and in the state of Alabama to aid in resource management and planning. This work has been done in collaboration with Drs. Emily Levitan and Russell Griffin. Drs. McGwin and Griffin are also in charge of COVID-19 analytics for the UAB Health System. The forecast is subject to change as the model is updated with new data. The models are based on the observed trajectory to date as well as the trajectories in other parts of the world.
COVID-19 Roundtable
Every week, a large group of SOPH Faculty and Staff meet on Fridays for the COVID-19 Roundtable Meeting. These meetings include COVID-19 forecasting updates, important news as well as relevant presentations by faculty and staff from both within the SOPH as well as UAB Medicine or other units on campus. View the Roundtable meeting archive here.
SOPH in the Media
Yahoo Finance
Doctor: ‘People are craving really clear information about what is happening’ on the vaccine front
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Yellowhammer
Sustained cellular immune dysregulation in individuals recovering from COVID-19
SOPH Expert: Dustin Long
Yahoo Finance
'Social gatherings far more worrisome than TSA lines': Epidemiologist
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Yahoo Finance
COVID-19 cases will rise in January 'beyond where they are right now': Doctor
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
UAB News
How can you safely return home for the holidays?
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
UAB News
How to overcome COVID-19 fatigue
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
UAB News
Epidemiologist answers questions about what to expect with coronavirus cases during the holidays
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Yahoo Finance
‘Pandemic fatigue’ a key reason why some aren't following COVID-19 safety measures: Epidemiologist
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
AL.com
How to stay safe from coronavirus while voting
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Arkansas falls behind on contact tracing
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
Elemental
This College Student Headed Back to Campus. Then an Epidemiologist Rated Her Every Move.
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
UAB News
UAB launches studies on COVID-19 awareness in minority populations
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Yahoo Finance
U.S. sees most new COVID-19 cases in 5 weeks
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
UAB Reporter
UAB team wins AHA prize for project mapping links between health disparities and COVID-19
Alabama Political Reporter
Study: Those with COVID twice as likely to have dined in restaurants
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
FOX 10
When a hurricane collides with COVID-19
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
Montgomery Advertiser
6 months later: Alabama struggled to balance public health, economy in COVID-19 response
SOPH Expert: Dean Paul Erwin
GMA
Labor Day fears of COVID-19 resurge
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
WFPL News
This Week In Conversation: Unexpected Consequences Of COVID-19
SOPH Expert: Sean McMahon
AL.com
The Deep South Center for Occupational Health and Safety in cooperation with the Alabama Nursing Home Association will be training 500 nursing home representatives throughout the State of Alabama as qualitative fit testers to return to their respective nursing homes to fit test their employees on N95's in the fight against transmission of Covid-19. 25 courses in 4.5 weeks. We are honored to be chosen as their training provider and to be a part of this mission.
FOX 10
Ask A COVID Question, using face masks after spraying with Lysol
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
Alabama Political Reporter
Alabama Public Health warns against COVID-19 misinformation shared on social media
SOPH Expert: Bertha Hidalgo
WVTM 13
Dr. Craig Wilson, SOPH Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology, has helped in the creation of DIY barriers in classrooms to enhance safety where physical spacing is a challenge.
FOX 10
Ask A COVID Question: Can retesting skew numbers?
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
UAB Reporter
Data wizards join fight against COVID-19 in UAB hackathon
UAB News
UAB launches second round of urgent, high-impact COVID-19 research
Chronicle.com
Our teaching-and-learning experts give you insights on what works in the classroom. Delivered on Thursdays
SOPH Expert: Stephen T. Mennemeyer
Pubmed.gov
Creating COVID-19 Stigma by Referencing the Novel Coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" on Twitter: Quantitative Analysis of Social Media Data
SOPH Expert: Henna Budhwani
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
COVID-19's Impact on the African American Community: A Stakeholder Engagement Approach to Increase Public Awareness Through Virtual Town Halls
SOPH Expert: Faith E. Fletcher & Shauntice Allen
UAB Reporter
Researchers honored with major prize for work with vulnerable communities in the Caribbean
SOPH Expert: Henna Budhwani
The Progress
COVID-19 death tolls now rising in key states after weeks of decline nationwide
SOPH Expert: Lisa McCormick
Yahoo Finance
We haven't even hit the edge of the COVID-19 bubble yet: Epidemiologist
SOPH Expert: Suzanne Judd
What has the SOPH been doing during the COVID-19 outbreak?
In the Community
SOPH faculty are serving as a sounding board/think tank for the Jefferson County Department of Health:
SOPH Faculty are providing evidence-based decision making and guidance regarding orders for isolation, quarantine, sheltering in place, testing, etc. These efforts include Dean Paul Erwin and Drs. Suzanne Judd, Lisa McCormick, and Kevin Fontaine. Students will be assisting JCDH in doing COVID-19 contact tracing and disease reporting.
SOPH faculty are leading the development of locally relevant disease modeling:
Dr. Pia Sen and colleagues used socio-demographic-economic data at the Census Tract level as well as public insurance data to rank all Alabama Census Tracts based on estimated COVID-19 risk, illustrating risk distribution across the state, for the four most populous Alabama counties, and for the city of Greater Birmingham. Estimates of the population at-risk in each county and the number of people who may require hospitalization under different hypothesized infection rates were computed and compared to the number of hospital beds available in each county. Results were shared with Jefferson County Department of Health and Alabama Medicaid.
We are partnering with agencies to provide online guidance and training:
We have led in partnering with the Birmingham Housing Authority (BHA), providing a two-hour webinar on communicating about COVID-19 to BHA residents (Drs. Shauntice Allen and Faith Fletcher, with additional facilitation by Maria White and Chris Simma). Additional webinars — broadcast/streamed live through Facebook – are being planned for other vulnerable populations.
Dr. Lisa McCormick and Elena Kidd, MPH, developed a training module in partnership with JCDH, Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency, and the Alabama Fire College. Narrated by Meena Nabavi, MPH, it targets those volunteering to keep critical infrastructure in place, including those volunteering in homeless shelters and for meal service providers that are engaging in emergency feeding operations across our community. This training, “COVID-19 Volunteer Safety Training,” is accessible online through Alabama Fire College Online Courses. Anyone can access the training, but you must first create an account. You cannot view this course as a guest.
We are pursuing scientific investigation:
Dr. Paul Muntner and the Office of Research have formed working groups to brainstorm lines of COVID-19 scientific inquiry. Groups were tasked with identifying public health research needs and assembling teams and strategies to meet those needs. Working groups were organized according to the Social-Ecological Model in order to address pressing public health research questions across the spectrum: from the genetics and genomics of the virus and psychological responses to ‘stay at home’ messaging to the analysis of patterns in Twitter data related to COVID-19. The UAB Institutional Review Board for Human Use (IRB) is reviewing and approving early studies and at least two research proposals have been submitted for extramural funding. All SOPH faculty, staff, and students are invited to join the weekly COVID-19 Virtual Journal Club to discuss seminal COVID-19 findings and stay abreast of the latest scientific developments.
Hear the SOPH Panel Discussion on COVID-19 Research
In the School
Dean Erwin has been providing a weekly video and e-mail for all SOPH faculty, staff, and students, summarizing new information on the outbreak, communications from the Provost’s and President’s offices, UAB policies, etc. This video is a synopsis of the COVID-19 Round Table meeting of leadership in the SOPH, which takes place every Friday at 11:00 a.m.
SOPH has held two Town Hall gatherings for our students via Zoom. The first focused on tips for successfully transitioning to online learning. The second was an open forum to hear students’ perceptions of communication and support from the school. At both Town Halls students have provided valuable feedback and innovative ideas for how we can support them during this time. In particular, students have pushed us to increase visibility of the positive things they are doing during the pandemic and to make a special effort to celebrate graduating students.
Weeks before the transition to online learning, we began preparing faculty with a series of frequency asked questions (FAQs) and tips on best practices in online education. Additional expert consultants have been added to the Instructional Design Group to support faculty, and eLearning presented a tailored webinar on best practices to more than 20 of our faculty recently. Many faculty have incorporated new pedagogical approaches in their courses and have redesigned assignments to focus on connections between the COVID-19 pandemic and their course content.
The School’s Emergency Management Team met daily for one week, every other day the next week, and now meets weekly. Chaired by Paul Wolf, it reviews communications received and sent, new/changing policies, activities with JCDH and ADPH, updates/changes to our Continuity of Operations Plan, and other matters related to COVID-19.
Videos
OPHP Seminar: The Impacts of COVID-19 on the Homeless Population
November 5, 2020
About: Ms. Carrie Leland, Executive Director at Pathways: A Woman's Way Home, presents on the mission and work of Pathways Home, a United Way agency that provides a range of services for homeless women and children. She shares challenges and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as discuss how the pandemic has impacted future planning and service delivery.
Moderated by: The Office of Public Health Practice, School of Public Health
OPHP Seminar: The State of COVID-19 in Alabama
September 3, 2020
About: The number of coronavirus cases reported in the United States topped 5 million on August 9, 2020. This tally had doubled since late June and, as of August 10th, accounts for approximately a quarter of all cases reported worldwide.
Moderated by: The Office of Public Health Practice, School of Public Health
COVID-19'S Impact on Food and Shelter Insecurity
May 11, 2020
Panelists include:
- Amanda Storey, Executive Director of Jones Valley Teaching Farm
- Carrie Leland, Executive Director of Pathways: A Woman's Way Home
Moderated by: Shauntice Allen, PhD, and Faith E. Fletcher, PhD.
COVID-19's Impact on Women: A Conversation with Medical and Public Health Experts
April 27, 2020
Panelists include:
- Zoe Julian, M.D., MPH, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UAB School of Medicine
- Tamera Coyne-Beasley, M.D., MPH, Division Director of Adolescent Medicine, UAB School of Medicine
Moderated by: Shauntice Allen, PhD, and Faith E. Fletcher, PhD.
COVID-19's Impact on the Black Community: A Conversation with Health Experts and Faith Leaders
April 6, 2020
Panelists include:
- Rev. Dr. Christopher Hamlin, Tabernacle Baptist Church, UAB 1917 Clinic
- Dr. Thomas Beavers, New Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church
- Dontrelle Young-Foster, Housing Authority of the Birmingham District
- Dr. Selwyn M. Vickers, Dean of the UAB School of Medicine
Moderated by: Shauntice Allen, PhD, and Faith E. Fletcher, PhD.
SOPH Coronavirus Panel Discussion with Experts from JCDH and UAB
February 7, 2020
Wesley G. Willeford, Medical Director of Disease Control at the Jefferson County Department of Health and an infectious disease physician, provides an update on the 2019 Coronavirus while Jianming "James" Tang, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, UAB Schools of Medicine and Public Health, presents Racing Against Time to Save Health Workers in the 2019-nCoV Front Lines.
Articles and Manuscripts
View All COVID-19 Academic Publications