Three Things Thursday highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week. Many students (K-12 and college) are already back in the classroom. Some students, like mine, do not go back until after the county fair concludes. Our family has a staggered start next week — my son begins Monday,1 my first day of classes is Tuesday, and my daughter’s first day is Wednesday.
Here’s your back-to-school reality check —
And I’m not zeroing in on the spread of COVID and influenza.
Other yucky things spread, too. Like lice and pink eye.
There’s also ringworm and athlete’s foot. And let’s not forget the viruses, like norovirus, that cause vomiting and diarrhea.
When humans gather and spend time together — in a classroom, locker room, dorm, bathroom, or cafeteria — the potential for disease spread increases.
Long before the pandemic, back-to-school season was associated with an increase in illnesses. Kids who haven’t been together for several months come together and spend a lot of time together. They share meals, work together at small tables, frequent the bathroom together, study together in the library (or a local coffee shop), and sit together on the bus to/from school.
Germs are spread through the air, through skin-to-skin contact, on surfaces, when hands are not washed properly, and when someone sneezes.
Here are (a few more than) three things we should all be doing to prepare for the illnesses that will occur as kids head back to the classroom for the new school year.
Hoping this post helps to educate and empower you
to be healthy and create healthy communities.
Given that diseases are going to spread, here is a step-by-step plan to prevent and deal with illnesses as we all head back to school —
Step #1 — Acknowledge that kids are going to get sick (adults, too).
Step #2 — Have a sick plan. Every family should have a sick plan — who needs to be contacted when a kid is sick, who is going to stay home with the sick kid, who is going to call the doctor. If you’re a teacher, how do you communicate with your principal? teaching partners? students? Do you need to talk to friends who may have been exposed to your illness? Are medications needed? Who do you call for advice? Who can you call to make a quick trip to the store for you? How can you keep your sick kid away from your (currently) healthy kid? All of these questions should be answered before someone gets sick. Plan NOW.
Step #3 — Stay home.
This is the hardest one for me. And it took a pandemic for me to realize that teaching with pneumonia (just as an example, not saying I did this in the fall of 2014) is a bad idea. It was terrible for my health. I was spreading disease to others. And I was a downright lousy teacher when I had a fever, wicked cough, and trouble breathing.
We ALL need to agree that staying home when we are sick is best for us — as we need to rest and recover. And staying home is also best for others. We stop/slow the chain of disease transmission when we isolate ourselves from others.
So stay home.
A general rule of thumb — stay home (or keep your kids home) if they are running a fever (>100.4*F), have diarrhea, are vomiting, have untreated lice, or have a sore throat, cough, pink eyes, or nasty runny nose. And we should all stay home until our symptoms have been gone for 24 hours without symptoms.
Step #4 — Teach & practice good hygiene. Simple acts like washing your hands (after using the bathroom and before eating) and sneezing into an elbow really do reduce the risk of disease spread. Other things we can do to prevent disease spread include, keeping our hands out of our eyes, noses, and mouths (this means NOT biting our fingernails) and refusing to share water bottles and utensils with others.
Step #5 — Stay up-to-date on all of your vaccines. Each of us should be making plans to get an updated COVID and flu vaccine in late September/early October. And anyone who is older than 75, pregnant, or an infant should get an RSV vaccine this fall. Details about fall vaccines will be coming in a future post. Be sure you are subscribed so you do not miss the details —
Healthy classrooms and school communities are created when everyone participates in the steps (1-5 above) needed to prevent disease spread.
Being healthy must be reimagined as a team sport — where everyone is working toward a shared/common goal (which is to be healthy).
Being healthy must include creating healthy communities.
Just as we teach kids in science classes about the interconnections and relationships between organisms, populations, and communities that make up an ecosystem, we need to reframe our understanding of and conversations about being healthy to include individual health, the health of our friends and families, the health of our communities, and environmental health — our Health(eco)system.
Questions? Need advice on what to include in a classroom or school policy about health communities? Please let me know. Happy to share the policies I use in my classroom.
And be sure to share this post with your friends and family, especially those with someone headed back to school.
Epi(demiology) Matters is written by Dr. Becky Dawson, PhD MPH — an epidemiologist, teacher, mom, wife, and dedicated yogi. She is a tenured professor at Allegheny College, Research Director at a community hospital, and an exclusive contributor (all things health & medicine) at Erie News Now (NBC/CBS). Her goal is to create healthy communities for all. She writes Epi Matters — first & foremost because epidemiology does matter (to all of us) and she hopes that each post will help to educate and empower readers to be healthy and create healthy communities.
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Epi(demiology) Matters is free — because science, reports, news, updates, and alerts about health should NOT be behind a paywall. EVER. Everyone needs access to up-to-date health information in order to be healthy and create healthy communities for all.
🤞🏻 Hopefully. My kid has had a rough last few weeks of summer health-wise. He was diagnosed with pneumonia on Monday (in the ER) and (likely) has Lyme Disease on top of that. He’s one sick kid. I need a personal assistant to keep up with all his medications and the dosing schedule.