Impact of COVID-19 on the Vector-Borne Disease Research and Applied Public Health Workforce in the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic has imposed extraordinary demands on the public and environmental health workforce, including those who work on vector-borne disease (VBD) prevention and control. In late 2021, we surveyed more than 100 applied public health professionals, academic researchers, and others working on VBDs in the United States. They reported that the supply chain disruptions and limited access to facilities that impeded laboratory work in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 have largely resolved. However, many public health personnel across job types and career stages are still working fewer hours on VBDs than they did before the pandemic. Many reported that they expect it to take several years for VBD specialists to fully reengage with clinicians and the public, reinvigorate their partnerships and professional networks, and recover from interruptions to work productivity and professional development. Despite these challenges, most applied and academic VBD workers remain enthusiastic about their work and eager to advance this important area of infectious disease research and practice.

Global health education for the post-pandemic years: parity, people, planet, priorities, and practices.

Global health degree programs are now offered by institutions of higher education in most world regions. Based on our review of the curricula for many of these programs, we identified five domains that are central to current global health education. "Parity" emphasizes health equity as the ultimate goal of global health. "People" comprises the social, economic, cultural, and political contributors to health and access to medical care for individuals and communities. "Planet" encompasses various aspects of globalization and environmental health that affect population health. "Priorities" and "practices" include the values, data, and tools used to design, implement, and evaluate partnerships, policies, programs, and other global health interventions in countries of all income levels. The pandemic is likely to increase student demand for global health education from the undergraduate through the graduate and professional levels. Our "5 Ps model of global health education" provides a comprehensive framework for the core student learning objectives for global health today. Knowledge of each of these domains is essential for preparing students for meaningful experiential learning and skilled professional practice in global health.

Statewide COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Population Mobility in the United States.

Many jurisdictions enacted stay-at-home orders (also called shelter-in-place orders, safer-at-home orders, or lockdowns) when SARS-CoV-2 began spreading in the United States. Based on Google mobility data, every state had substantially fewer visits to transit stations, retail and recreation facilities, workplaces, grocery stores, and pharmacies by the end of March 2020 than in the previous two months. The mean decrease in visitation rates across destination categories was about 30 percent in states without stay-at-home orders and 40 percent in states with stay-at-home orders. Similarly, there were fewer routing requests received by Apple in large cities for public transportation, walking, and driving, with a 10 percentage point greater mean reduction in metropolitan areas under statewide stay-at-home orders. The pandemic led to large decreases in mobility even in states without legal restrictions on travel, but statewide orders were effective public health policy tools for reducing human movement below the level achieved through voluntary behavior change.