LU Moment: LU's Covid-19 Work in the Community | S2 Ep. 40

Introduction

Shelly Vitanza: Welcome to the LU Moment! Thank you for listening! I’m Shelly Vitanza, the director of public affairs at Lamar University. Each week, we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects and events and people at Lamar University. What are we talking about this week? GOURDeous crafts! There’s a socially distanced but Halloween festive pumpkin walk in downtown Beaumont going on now through October 31^st. The walk features all kinds of decorated pumpkins which are gourds, right? Which is why they are GOURDeous. And seven of these pumpkins have been designed and crafted by Lamar University art students. I can’t wait to see them. They are going to be red, white, and beautiful all over. The convention and visitor’s bureau is hosting this event now through October 31^st in downtown Beaumont around the art museum of southeast Texas, so go and check that out. It’s going to be a one-of-a-kind event and just great. It’s something to do during this time when we’ve all been stuck at home with little to do.

What else is happening at LU? Well, let me tell you. Even during the pandemic, it is not quiet here on campus. We’re moving forward, implementing CDC guidelines, and using a lot of virtual platforms with great events like the Jazz Giants clinic series hosted by the incredible Mary Morgan Moore of the Department of Music.  There are three free hour-long virtual clinics featuring some of the most celebrated names in jazz. The clinic will be presented during a regular rehearsal setting of the Cardinal Jazz orchestra. Clinicians will critique the band and opera perspective on jazz history and careers, plus it will allow some Q&A time with members of the band. All clinics seen at 11:30 am and guests will be admitted to the free jazz giant’s clinic series on a first come, first serve basis. The zoom link for this event, I’m going to give you the date, but you can get the zoom link at lamar.edu/music. So, 11:30am October 26^th, the cardinal jazz orchestra will be joined by Woodwind specialist composer and band leader, Tim Richmond. He is a fixture in the Los Angeles studio of music scene for more than 40 years. He can be heard on countless film and television soundtracks. And he’s composed with and produced several albums as a soloist and a band leader. He’s toured with Dan Kenton, Bob Lawrence and Bob menstro. That’s October 26^th, first come, first serve 11:30am, free.

November 2^nd features the legendary Peter Irkskin. Peter has played the drums since the age of four and is known for his versatility and his love of working in different musical contacts. He appears on 700 albums of film scores and has won two Grammy awards plus an honorary doctorate from the Berkely School of Music. In addition to his busy performing, composing and producing schedule, he teaches drums at the University of Southern California.

On November the 16^th, again, 11:30am, free of charge, we will have a clinic that features Mr. Tom Bones Malone, a veteran of the New York Jazz Scene since the 1980’s. Tom was a member of the legendary Blue’s Brothers and appeared in the film By The Same Name in addition to being a regular member of the Saturday Night Live band for ten years. Tom has played on 4,400 plus television shows, 4,200 of those on the Late Night with David Letterman, 3,000 radio and television commercials and more than 1,500 recordings and thousands of live performances throughout the world. And he’s done 2,700 arrangements for television. Again, all clinics begin at 11:30am, and they are October 26^th, November 2^nd, and November 16^th. You can go to lamar.edu/music for the Zoom link and that is just awesome.

LU's work in the community with Dr. Praphul Joshi

Shelly Vitanza: So, you know who says a pandemic stops everything? We are continuing in a virtual format to offer very worthy and exciting and impactful events to Lamar University.

So, in my chair here in the public affairs office, a name has continued to come up on my computer screen: Praphul Joshi. Most recently, Dr. Joshi came to my attention because he has been granted funding to work on contact tracing for COVID. Therefore, I wanted to invite him to talk about his latest projects and his background in public health. It’s really fascinating. Let me tell you a little bit about him. He was a trained dental surgeon in India and worked in several hospitals during his final years of training. Also, in residency he worked in a number of public health programs and underserved areas which transformed his career pathway. He has a passion and a goal of working in public health projects to address health disparities. Dr Josie obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in public health in the from the School of Public Health, University of South Carolina and as an associate professor here at Lamar University he teaches social epidemiology, current health issues and U.S and international health disparities. Those are some classes I’d be interested in taking. I was so fascinated, Dr. Josie, welcome, to read your background and find out a little bit more about you. So, when did you come to Lamar University and what was your path here?

Dr. Praphul Joshi: Thank you, Shelly for the introduction. Yes, I joined the Lamar team in the Fall of 2014. The main reason I was recruited here was there was the opportunity to start the Master of Public Health program and they were very successful in implementing it in the Fall of 2015. So, I’ve been here working on that program.

Shelly Vitanza: Okay, so you actually initiated the program here at Lamar, public health?

Dr. Praphul Joshi: That is correct.

Shelly Vitanza: Fantastic. So, you have a passion or goal of working on public health projects to address these public disparities. How have you been involved in that during this pandemic? I mean, this has got to be a fascinating time for you and for all of those studying public health. What has been your focus, or your observations based on your background?

Dr. Praphul Joshi: So, back in February and March when we started seeing more cases in the country and also more cases trickle down here in southeast Texas, it was hitting very hard on us and public health professionals everywhere that we need to step up and do more. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to actually involve students because there is no time better than this for them to get hands-on experience and training. So, immediately, I spoke with our local health department here in Jefferson County as well as in southeast Texas and the biggest need at that time was educational materials that could create awareness. So, our students stepped up immediately and created educational materials like brochures, flyers, and a lot of other resources with Spanish and other languages to be posted in restaurants and any pit stops, highways and a lot of other public places. Those initiatives were very successful, and we also indulged in contacting some local non-profit agencies in securing some PPE in that time which was very scarce. And after that, I started working on the analytics for Jefferson county and since then, until today, we continually report the cases, and analyze hospitalizations and the trends in these regions and as you mentioned, more recently, we are very excited to have this opportunity to implement contact tracing. Our students are already doing that, initially. Then I asked for volunteers for contact tracing within the span of two or three days we had about 25 students who said they would be volunteering or willing to help for contact tracing. Our students are very excited, very passionate about this and I think it’s a very exciting opportunity for us to be involved.

Shelly Vitanza: Well it is! I think it’s wonderful that it’s another way that Lamar University partner’s with the community for the benefit of the community and your having such an impact on all of us here with your work and just behind the scenes, an incredible impact. So, talk to us about the current trends and what maybe your analysis has uncovered and what that means to us if you can.

Dr. Praphul Joshi: In the pandemic, we had a very high spike in cases back in July and the summer months and the summer months that just contributed to that and thankfully the cases came down significantly through August and September and then there were other slight increase in cases. But over the last three or four weeks, we have been averaging around 30, 35 cases her in Jefferson county per day. Hopefully, they will come down but that’s where we are currently at. Still, we are not out of the woods yet, but we have a long way to go and everyone needs to contribute towards bringing these cases down.

Shelly Vitanza: In your opinion, bringing these cases down, what does that look like? Wearing your masks? Washing hands?

Dr. Praphul Joshi: That is correct. Very simple measures that everybody knows. Social distancing, wearing masks, applying hand sanitizers, frequently hand washing and doing our best and also don’t forget to get the flu shot this year because, those who have not gotten the flu shot this year, this is the time to get it. You don’t want to have a community with a high spike of COVID and the flu. That would really burden our hospital systems. Those are the things that everybody implements, we should be able to bring our caseloads down. I should say, you know good circumstances.

Shelly Vitanza: Yeah! You know, I was really glad and proud to see that Lamar University is hosting three flu shot events where faculty, staff, and students can go get their flu shots on the next few Mondays. The Health Center is doing that, and I plan on doing that for mine and I’m encouraging everyone to do that. So, let’s talk about this contact tracing project you’re working on. So, what does contact tracing really involve? And how are you involving students in that process. 

Dr. Praphul Joshi: So, it’s a multi-step process. If a positive test is identified that person gets a telephone call essentially from one of the contact tracers in the public health department and in this case, it would be one of our students. And there is a questionnaire which asks about how the symptoms have occurred, who the family members are, if they are doing okay, if they have any symptoms and who this person has been in close contact with. Close contact is something which we define as sharing close spaces within six feet or for five minutes of time. So, we try to get as many names of individuals who were in close contact for this person, so the call happens on a daily basis. Making sure there are two outcomes of this one making sure that the confirmed case, he or she is doing okay or the ten to fourteen-day quarantine period. And we also want to make sure that his close associates whether it is his family members or close friends are doing okay and in some circumstances if we do get contact information of the close associates that person will also be contacted and we will ask them if they are experiencing symptoms or refer them for testing if they actually have symptoms. So, contact tracing is very essential for mitigation efforts for COVID-19. We need to make sure it is not spread beyond that small cluster.

Shelly Vitanza: Got it. Well, Dr. Joshi, I appreciate you. Lamar University is fortunate to have you at this time in history and in our community as well. So, we appreciate all that your doing and involving students in this real-world problem is an added benefit, a perk to our LU students who get that experiential learning and working with you. Thank you so much for joining us and letting us know what you are doing.

Dr. Praphul Joshi: Thank you very much have a good day.

Shelly Vitanza: Before we leave, I want to remind you to save the date for October 20^th, 6:30-7:30 pm. We will be doing a Facebook Live with LU distinguished alumnus, Larry Boleu who graduated from Lamar University in ’77 and who has had an amazing career here in southeast Texas. You can go to lamar.edu/live or look on our Facebook page and get more information and join us for that discussion. 6:30-7:30 October the 20^th.

I am Shelly Vitanza, the director of public affairs at Lamar University. You’ve been listening to LU Moment and we appreciate you doing that. See you next week.