Health Policy
Energy and environmental policies affect human and non-human animal health and well-being, but they are clearly not the only factors. We view health policy as an ever-evolving, interdisciplinary field that traverses many disciplines including those traditionally within public health and medicine, as well as across liberal arts, architecture and planning, engineering, just to name a few. Strengths at Virginia Tech include policy evaluation around infectious disease control, and implementation and evaluation of interventions for many chronic diseases, including substance use disorder.
Health policy swung to "front and center" during the COVID-19 pandemic, where basic and clinical research had to reach policymakers of all levels rapidly, accurately and in a manner that non-health experts could understand - not the usual course of translation. To help researchers learn how localities and governments responded to the evolving pandemic waves and what the relative successes were (for the next health emergency), we developed a "database of databases" from available public sources that track both mortality and morbidity, but also policy - including implementation and logistics, where available. This database is available for research and teaching, and is updated approximately annually.
Chair: Julia Gohlke, Associate Professor, Population Health Sciences (jgohlke@vt.edu)