Amelia S's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: 100 Years of Viruses: How time and technology have shaped the public health response BASIS Advisor: Nathaniel Green Internship Location: Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins Onsite Mentor: Dr. Derek Cummings, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor

Project Abstract

Globalization has been a double-edged sword for diseases – allowing them to spread faster and farther, but also, to some extent, making it easier to fight them. New technology and faster communication have made it easier to identify and fight epidemics as they arise, even as they spread across the globe faster than ever. However, epidemics are not a thing of the past. As COVID showed, it is as important as ever to continue to develop our methods to understand and stop diseases. Each epidemic before COVID, from Spanish Flu in 1918 to SARS in 2002, helped create the framework of our current public health system, both domestically and internationally. My project sought to understand each of the epidemics that came before COVID, the lessons learned from them, and how they shaped our current understanding of disease. I interned at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins and used R and machine learning tools to analyze specific strains of influenza antibodies in patients. At the same time, I investigated diseases over the past century to better understand the public health responses to each of them, what they taught the world about how to combat disease, and how those lessons were implemented. I also researched how modern technology has impacted this, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. I gained a better understanding of how public health has changed over this period, and the factors that lead to those changes . Hopefully my project will help inform people about the processes and history of public health and its continued importance.