Speaker: Malia Jones, associate scientist at the Applied Population Lab Description: Explore the origins in March 2020 of Dear Pandemic, a group of scientists and health care workers to provide curated, comprehensive, and timely information about COVID-19 on social media. Track how the composition, collaborations and communications of Dear Pandemic have evolved over the past 14 months as the covid pandemic has spread, as control measures have evolved, as the disease has become politicized, and as vaccines have come to the fore. Get insights into the coming phase of “Pandexit” as covid dwindles and many angles of life return to near-normal.
Bio: Malia Jones is an associate scientist at the Applied Population Lab at UW-Madison and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of “Dear Pandemic.” She is a social epidemiologist with expertise in GIS methods. Her research focuses on the social and spatial determinants of health at the population level. She is especially interested in the social forces that lead to higher rates of chronic and infectious disease outcomes among disadvantaged populations, and how those forces are located in geographic space. She holds both a doctoral and a master’s degree in Public Health and is skilled in advanced GIS and quantitative analytic methods.