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Total Health: Is a surge of epidemiologists over the horizon?

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Point Park University professor Laura Frost, at left, teaches a biochemistry class.

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Laura Frost

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Courtesy of Metro Creative

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a surge in students studying to be epidemiologists and environmental health scientists could be in the works.

Enrollment in journalism schools soared after the dogged reporting of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon’s presidency in the 1970s.

Could the COVID-19 pandemic, an even more earth-shattering event, help spawn a similar increase in the number of epidemiologists and environmental health scientists?

Laura Frost thinks so.

“I am very hopeful that we will,” Frost explained earlier this week.

A Centerville resident, Frost has special insight into COVID-19, Staph infections and other things that all of us would prefer to avoid because of her role as a professor of biology at Point Park University. Frost and others who spend their days immersed in the biological sciences believe students might be inspired to go into the field not only because of the upheaval wrought by the coronavirus, but also by the fact that those students could land jobs in areas like environmental protection, animal husbandry and health care.

“When we talk to students, we try to figure out what the end goal is,” she said. “If they pursue a four-year degree, they will be able to land entry-level work in health departments or in the environmental field, but most will continue their educations in graduate programs.”

Frost’s own journey into the biological sciences started when she was a student at Bethlehem-Center Middle School. After graduating high school, she received a degree in biology from California University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree from Iowa State University, where she studied plant pathology, and then a Ph.D in microbiology and immunology at West Virginia University. Frost taught for two years at Gannon University in Erie before landing at Point Park.

Of course, many of the students who take a biology course at Point Park or other colleges and universities are doing so to meet requirements while they work toward degrees in fields like history or communications. For those students, and for people who are not even considering higher education, Frost believes an understanding of science, and its methods and principles, is crucial.

“I think it’s critically important,” she said. It harbors critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, Frost added, and those are “critical to society.”

“Too often, we fail to think critically or use good problem-solving skills,” Frost said.

What are the sorts of skills a student should have when they enter the biological sciences program?

“An open mind,” Frost said.

As the pandemic has unfolded, Frost said it’s been frustrating to see the recommendations of public health officials cast aside by some elected officials, and she hopes once COVID-19 runs its course the area of public health will be treated with more respect.

“I’m really, really hoping that public health gets its due,” Frost said. “I really, really hope people don’t take being healthy for granted. People need an understanding of how infectious diseases impact us all the time. That understanding is important to all of us.”

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