From a research laboratory to a hospital bedside to the neighborhood pharmacy, this profession touches all of health care in a pandemic.
As the spread of COVID-19 affects people around the world, scientists have been working overtime to develop potential treatments. Among them is a Jun Wang, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona who recently identified four compounds that can block the replication of the virus within a cell, providing a promising starting point for the development of drugs that can treat the disease.
Contact tracing is an indispensable part of breaking the chain of a pathogen's transmission and getting society back on track, according to most health officials including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This process can seem intrusive, but public health agencies have honed it over decades. “We get people to tell us who their public contacts are when they have syphilis,” said Kristen Pogreba-Brown, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. “We know how to do this.”
After finishing his degree at the University of Arizona as a doctor in pharmacy, Jeffrey Asman, 56, said the decision to go back to school in his “second half of life” was an easy one. “I was 48 or 49 wondering if my old college credits were any good. It is cliché to say but really true that it is never too late.”
