One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we reflect on the important ways population health scientists have contributed to the pandemic response by chatting with Drs Lindsey Leininger and Amanda Simanek, two members of the Those Nerdy Girls who lead Dear Pandemic website and social media platforms. Dear Pandemic uses social media to answer people’s pandemic-related questions, aiming to cut through the swirl of disinformation on the web with clear and concise communication.  Join us as we learn how Dear Pandemic got started and emerged, how the team is communicating science in innovative ways, and the lessons the Nerdy Girls have learned about their science and professional development with this project.  Listeners can learn more about Dear Pandemic here: https://dearpandemic.org/

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We are just in the first few months of 2021 but there is already quite a bit to digest. On the heels of a year of racial reckoning with the punctuation of the January 6 insurrection, deep societal fractures have been revealed. While surprising to many Americans, for many people, especially the outstanding scholars who contributed to this episode, these recent events are products as a continual manifestation of the legacy of racism that undergirds the United States. If racial equity in health, socioeconomics and other outcomes are a goal of population health, it is clear that we must disrupt historical legacies of racism that have continued to affect contemporary issues. We were pleased to be joined by Professors David Cunningham and Geoff Ward, both from Washington University in St. Louis. Professor David Cunningham is the Chair of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on racial contention and its legacies. Dr. Geoff Ward is Professor of African and African-American Studies and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Sociology and American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship examines the racial politics of social control and the pursuit of racial justice, historically and today.

Listeners can find Professor Cunningham’s latest book, Klansville, USA: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan here.

Professors Ward and Cunningham are editing a forthcoming special issue  for The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “Legacies of Racial Violence: Clarifying and Addressing the Presence of the Past” with an anticipated publishing in May 2021.

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