24 | SEPTEMBER 3 • 2020
continued from page 23
those cheesy things everyone
tells you about how you’
ll take
a class in college and it’
ll all just
click and make sense actually
happened for me.
”
The class was
a freshman sem-
inar at University
of Michigan called
Emerging Infectious
Diseases. “I loved
everything about it,
”
she said. Public health
“combines my love
of biology and also foreign
relations and government and
politics and human behavior. I
loved all of it.
”
That inspired Gadoth to
get her master’
s in public
health from the University
of Michigan, and then do a
yearlong fellowship through
American Jewish World Service,
working on maternal and child
health initiatives in India. She
returned to Ann Arbor to
work as a toxicologist but soon
realized she missed the human
interaction side of public health,
so she decided to go back to
school for her Ph.D.
Now, she’
s researching the
impact of COVID-19 and try-
ing to figure out how to create
and run a public health study
during a global pandemic.
Study development usually hap-
pens over the course of several
months, Gadoth said, but this
project was off the ground in
about three weeks.
That hasn’
t been the team’
s
only timing challenge: they
thought there would be a huge
COVID-19 spike in L.A. in
April, and they’
d be able to
begin analyzing their data and
drawing conclusions right away.
But “we had a really low pos-
itivity rate among our health
care workers and first respond-
ers, which makes the analysis
really difficult to do,
” Gadoth
said. “We have over 2,000 peo-
ple enrolled in our study, and
only had 25 positives right up
until a couple of weeks ago.
”
Now, in the weeks after
summer holidays and Black
Lives Matter protests
and a rolling back
of state-imposed
restrictions, that
spike has arrived in
L.A.
“
A funny, weird
part of working with
human populations
... is that you just never really
know when things are going
to happen,
” Gadoth said. “You
just have to be there, be ready
and be collecting data the whole
time, so that when something
does happen, you catch it.
”
Despite the roadblocks,
Gadoth has found the research
to be rewarding. She loves the
ability to test people for the
study and then provide them
with their own test results in
real time, she said.
It also gives her a sense of
purpose. “It would be really
hard to be watching from the
sidelines and be stuck at home
if I didn’
t feel I was also able to
add to our response in some
way and sort out the questions
that remain,” she said.
Gadoth’
s public health
advice to all Americans right
now is to wear a mask and
keep a distance from every-
one outside your household.
When social interaction does
happen, do it outside. And get
your flu shot.
“Please get your flu shot to
protect yourself from another
respiratory disease, which could
have compounding effects if
you have both simultaneously,
”
Gadoth said. “We don’
t know
anything about that yet, but
they’
re both respiratory illnesses
that could be really devastating
to have a co-infection of those
two things.
”
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