To the Class of 2021

By Jodie L. Guest, PhD, MPH

Our first day in class, August 28, 2019, came with table nametags, so I could learn every one of your names.  It also came with a questionnaire asking a few additional questions including, “I would like you to know: __________” and space for you to share anything you wanted. I still have these 161 forms in my office.  They made me laugh, they made me happy, they gave me information to help know you, and they explained silly and important things that make each of you unique. One of you told me you had to walk between classes and so would be late, and likely sweaty. Some of you shared your uneasiness with the beginning of grad school and specifically called out math, English speaking skills, and a new location as anxiety-provoking. I learned about your excitement to get started, your love of chocolate, and that you are a first generation college student. One of you wanted my cats to have their fair share of time on my slides and not just my dogs and several of you told me about your talented dogs and their tricks (hello, Estes, who can close the door by herself!).

As a class, you have endured the oddest of school circumstances. On one hand, you started your public health career during the vaping lung epidemic. As we finished your first semester, I said, “it’s incredible to study public health during an epidemic.” By March of your second semester, we traded the vaping epidemic for a pandemic the likes of which I hope we do not see again in our lifetime.  You were moved to fully online classes with just a few days’ notice. We never expected your second year would still be so heavily impacted by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic or that so many would suffer and die.  Vaping lung was gone and everything was COVID-19. You watched people on social media become experts in your new field, with training or not. You got a crash course in science messaging including disastrous messaging that cost lives.

Between zoom classes, hybrid classes, APEs and thesis work, you engaged with this pandemic in important ways. You cared for family members and each other. You volunteered at the local health department doing contact tracing or at testing events. You supported COVID-19 studies by collecting samples and doing data analysis. You supported communities by handing out masks, providing translated prevention materials, and smiling behind your masks. You countered conspiracy theories on social media and used your new vocabulary to synthesize the rapidly growing and changing understanding of COVID-19. Concurrently, due to continuous violence towards and deaths of black men and women, transgendered persons and the Asian community, you helped push us all to declare racism as a public health crisis. You asked us to be better and work harder as anti-racists.  You led us and we, as individual people and as a community, will continue this good and hard work.

So my thoughts as you graduate?  First, you are a special, remarkable class of good humans.  That cannot be said enough. Second, I think it is clear that the world needs you. We need you as our trained public health colleagues and we need you as the engaged, compassionate, and persistent group of people who have both persevered and succeeded during the wildest of times. My next thought is to urge you to not shy away from politics in public health but to fight to get it back on bipartisan footing. Find good trouble and lead with science. My last thought for you is to ask you to continue to share yourselves. Each of you has a different story, a different lens and that is what makes the world beautiful. 

It has been an honor to know each of you, to work alongside you, and to learn from you.

Dr. Jodie L. Guest (PhD, MPH) is the Vice Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and serves as a Research Professor. Dr. Guest is also on the leadership team for the Emory COVID Response Collaborative (ECRC) and leads the COVID-19 Outbreak Response Team.