Revolutionized Public Health Teaching to Equip Medical Students for 21st Century Practice

COVID-19 has altered public health higher education and its impact on pedagogy will be felt long into the future. In response to social distancing measures, teaching academics implemented a number of changes to curricula. It is important to better understand and begin to evaluate these changes, as well as set a course for future changes to public health curricula both during and after the pandemic to best enable transformative learning. Teaching academics have an understanding of academic hierarchies and student perceptions and are well placed to provide insights into current and future changes to pedagogy in response to the pandemic. A survey was developed to examine changes that academics had made to their teaching in response to COVID-19. Responses were received from 63 public health teaching academics from five universities in Australia, the United States, and Canada. Public health teaching academics rapidly implemented a number of changes to their teaching, including alterations that enabled online teaching. The great majority of changes to teaching were related to tools or techniques, such as synchronous tutorials delivered in a video meeting room. There remains further work for the public health pedagogy community in reevaluating teaching aims and teaching philosophies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This could include examination of the weighting of different topics, including communicable diseases, in curricula. A series of questions to assist academics reformulating their curricula is provided. Public health teaching evolved rapidly to meet the challenges of COVID-19; however, ongoing adaptation is necessary to further enhance pedagogy.

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Indoor Environmental Quality in Dwellings and Lifestyle Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Russian Perspective

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18115975 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (11) ◽

pp. 5975

Author(s):

Vladimir Reshetnikov ◽

Oleg Mitrokhin ◽

Elena Belova ◽

Victor Mikhailovsky ◽

Maria Mikerova ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Medical Students ◽

Environmental Quality ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Lifestyle Behaviors ◽

Contagious Diseases ◽

Health Authorities ◽

Public Health Authorities ◽

Isolation Index ◽

Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern, and as a response, public health authorities started enforcing preventive measures like self-isolation and social distancing. The enforcement of isolation has consequences that may affect the lifestyle-related behavior of the general population. Quarantine encompasses a range of strategies that can be used to detain, isolate, or conditionally release individuals or populations infected or exposed to contagious diseases and should be tailored to circumstances. Interestingly, medical students may represent an example of how the COVID-19 pandemic can form new habits and change lifestyle behaviors. We conducted a web-based survey to assess changes in lifestyle-related behavior of self-isolated medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then we analyzed the sanitary-hygienic regulations of the Russian Federation to determine the requirements for healthy buildings. Results showed that during the pandemic, the enforcement of isolation affects medical students’ lifestyle-related behavior and accompanies an increase in non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and healthy buildings are cutting-edge factors in preventing COVID-19 and NCDs. The Russian sanitary-hygienic regulations support improving this factor with suitable requirements for ventilation, sewage, waste management, and disinfection. Herein, assessing isolation is possible through the hygienic self-isolation index.

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