In this episode, Professor Richard Carpiano talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about the severity of COVID-19 in relation to public health in general, as well as in comparison to other global infectious diseases, such as measles or SARS.

About Richard Carpiano:

Richard Carpiano is a Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He is also the co-editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the leading journal for medical sociology scholarship. As a population health scientist and medical sociologist, Professor Carpiano examines how social factors, like socioeconomic status, race-ethnicity, social connections, and community conditions, contribute to the physical and mental health of adults and children. His most research program investigates social, behavioral, and attitudinal factors underlying child vaccination uptake and coverage (and refusal or delay) in the US and Canada.

Learn more about Richard Carpiano via https://sociology.ucr.edu/faculty/richard-m-carpiano/

Podcast Highlights:

“Viruses unfortunately do happen and outbreaks do occur...but it presents a nice opportunity for us to be thinking about how important public health is, not just private health care.”

-       Richard Carpiano on the topic of COVID-19 labeled as a public health emergency and international concern from the World Health Organization.

“An eccentric question gets a larger issue of how does the public perceive risk...and our brains are just not very good at thinking about risk.”

-       Richard Carpiano on the topic of why behaviors change when a threat of virus heightens.

“Whenever there is misunderstanding, whenever there is confusion...and it comes from a particular region of the world… we associate certain features with those characteristics.”

-       Richard Carpiano on the topic of the similarities and differences between coronavirus and SARS.

Guest:

Richard Carpiano (Professor of Public Policy and Sociology, UC Riverside)

Interviewers:

Maddie Bunting (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Chief Ambassador)

Eric Calderon (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Ambassador)

Music by:

Samuel Roberts (UCR Public Policy ‘20)

This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/

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