UC Berkeley team publishes new study showing that a global catastrophe was averted by the implementation of emergency public health measures in 6 key countries

Emergency health measures implemented in China, France, Iran, Italy, South Korea, and the US have “significantly and substantially slowed” the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to UC Berkley research team lead author Solomon Hsiang. Their study was published June 8 in the journal Nature. The findings come as leaders worldwide struggle to balance the enormous and highly visible economic costs of emergency health measures against their public health benefits, which are difficult to see.

Van Andel Institute for Education is helping teachers and students keep curiosity and a love of  learning alive amid COVID-19 related K-12 school closures by providing open access to at-home learning resources and a relevant Blue Apple™ project.

The Institute has launched a free, virtual version of “Prevent the Spread,” a project where  students learn about their unique power to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The virtual project, which is geared toward students in grades 3-8, can be found here.

“Teachers are making heroic efforts to adjust to distance learning on the fly,” said VAI Chief Education Officer Terra Tarango. “They want to continue with authentic, meaningful learning experiences, and we want to help them do that.”

Western Michigan University research supports effectiveness of telehealth

Using technology to provide real-time communication between patients to health care providers could be a cost-effective solution to increase the quality of services and number of trained professionals in underserved areas, recent research shows.

Delivering health care, information or education at a distance using video conferencing, telephone calls or remote patient monitoring is especially relevant given the outbreak of COVID-19 and concerns about in-person contact.

Dr. Stephanie Peterson, chair and professor for WMU’s Department of Psychology, is the principal investigator of the lab responsible for publishing the study which investigated the effectiveness of delivering behavior skills training via telehealth to evaluate function of severe problem behavior.   

 “Telehealth is effective over miles and miles, and it’s exciting because you can increase accessibility to services to those who can actually benefit from it. For example, if you think about those who live in the rural areas of Michigan, or even the upper peninsula, telehealth allows you set up a virtual clinic to act as a station of experts who can help people access state-of-the-art interventions.”