Public Health

Once two weeks have passed following a second COVID-19 vaccine dose (or one Johnson & Johnson dose), individuals are considered fully vaccinated. At that point , what activities are considered “safe” to resume? Meenakshi Bewtra of the Perelman School of Medicine says that for vaccinated people, activities that were once considered risky are safer, but advises people to proceed with caution in light of new variants, and to keep public health and safety at the forefront of daily activities by wearing a mask and maintaining social distance in public.

Air in the Philadelphia region is ranked as the 12th most polluted in the country by the American Lung Association. Toxins in the air, mainly from traffic and industry, are known to cause lung cancer. Trevor Penning, a pharmacology professor in the Perelman School of Medicine, developed hazard indices for 421 zip codes using satellite imagery for particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. Penning traced 70,000 lung cancer cases between 1998 and 2017 to air pollution in certain zip codes in the Philadelphia region, finding that the highest polluted areas track with the I-95 Corridor.

Elizabeth Howell of the Perelman School of Medicine said that severe maternal morbidity, in which women experience severe complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, impacts more than 50,000 U.S. women each year. “Similar to maternal mortality, Black and brown women have elevated rates of maternal morbidity,” she said.

Samuel Preston of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about rising mortality rates in the U.S. over the last two decades. Preston and his colleagues attribute the shift in part to this country’s lack of a universal health care system.

Aaron Richterman of the Perelman School of Medicine said promoting how effective COVID-19 vaccines actually are would help convince more people to get vaccinated. “Nothing is ever 100 percent, but these are as effective as any vaccine that’s ever been tested,” he said. “That’s how I would frame that.”