Best in Class
Could You Be The Next Michael Baker?
Epidemiology, contagion, clusters — viruses have never been more topical, and both the public health response and the way officials communicate what’s happening to the public have never been more crucial to get right. Perhaps unsurprisingly, courses aimed at budding epidemiologists and public health communicators have seen increased interest since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.
Those aspiring to be the next Professor Michael Baker could learn from the man himself, studying public health at the University of Otago. Baker — a go-to science expert on Covid-19 since the earliest days of the pandemic, and part of the Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group — heads the postgraduate Health Protection class, teaching students how to develop conceptual, analytical and field-based skills. Enrolments for postgraduate public health classes at Otago were up more than 50 per cent in 2021 compared to last year.
At the University of Auckland, well-known vaccine expert Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris leads a class called Epidemics: Black Death to Bioterrorism. It covers an enormous number of historically significant epidemic events from plagues to pandemics, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, smoking, problem gambling and road crashes, to social contagions such as
