After collecting nearly 30 vacuumed dust samples from places like schools, university residence halls and office buildings, researchers simultaneously identified the presence of 54 distinct viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, norovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, and others. 

Indoor dust tends to accumulate biological material shed by occupants and also integrates signatures from the air, surfaces and human activity over time, which means using these particles to monitor viral pathogen trends could aid early detection efforts against future outbreaks. 

“It’s really important that we understand broadly how to track disease in our community,” said Karen Dannemiller, senior author of the study and an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering and environmental health sciences at The Ohio State University. “Similar to wastewater monitoring, which tracks disease clusters on a large-scale level, we’ve created an intermediate tool that has those same benefits for a smaller population.” 

Compared to traditional sampling methods, dust-based techniques are advantageous because the particles are easily collected during routine cleaning, it requires no specialized plumbing access, and dust can remain stable at room temperature for extended periods. These simple but critical aspects can lead to quick, high-resolution insights into what is happening within a specific space and help researchers take appropriate measures to address it, said Dannemiller. 

“This is groundbreaking work,” she said. “While people have sequenced viruses out of dust before, it’s been on a pretty limited basis and was not proposed as a surveillance tool.”

The study was recently published in the journal Building and Environment.

To take a targeted look at these pathogens, researchers utilized both PCR analysis and a novel sequencing technique that detects the RNA molecules that viruses leave behind after they decay. By comparing the findings in their sample to a library panel of 200 potential pathogens, the team measured and categorized many viruses at once, a capability that, on the ground, would increase both the efficiency and utility of future viral investigations. 

“Research like this is useful for monitoring a range of buildings where there’s a variety of things that you're concerned about,” said Dannemiller. “By using that information to help pinpoint those issues, it’s possible to improve our decisions about where to direct limited mitigation resources.”

Significantly, building dust could also be used to capture data from both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, a noninvasive aspect that would allow researchers and decision-makers to infer viral patterns without the need for direct clinical testing. 

While researchers in this study did not measure the viability of the sampled viruses, it’s unlikely that leftover viral particles in dust would still be infectious – depending on the bug. Given the minimal risk, establishing a robust and easily scalable dust-based monitoring tool would provide the public with a much broader understanding of community transmission. 

For instance, three of the viruses the team found were shown to be more prevalent in child-associated settings, like daycares, rather than in buildings primarily occupied by adults, and a total of 85% of all collected samples contained at least one rhinovirus. Such results signify that dust can even capture public health trends by occupant demographic, like age. 

Overall, findings suggest that dust-based surveillance may be a powerful complement to wastewater surveillance, particularly for early warning of threats in enclosed environments. Future work may include exploring the use of this sampling in military and healthcare settings and determining if the team’s new viral sampling technique could help automate detection pipelines. 

“This is an initial step to understanding how we can use technology to better monitor at the building level for different infectious diseases,” said Dannemiller. “Ultimately, that leads to a more informed use of precautions and better targeting for the use of resources.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Austin Shamblin, Calissa Carlisle, Nicholas Nastasi, Seth Faith, Michael Sovic and Vanessa Varaljay, as well as Genny Cook, Anthony Fries, Richard Agans from the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. This study was supported by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory, the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

“Being an employee at Ohio State is so advantageous,” he said. “The sense of purpose you get working with students who are in recovery … made it hard to feel like the grass is greener anywhere else.”

Hosni has been with the CRC almost since the beginning, joining the fledgling organization in 2015. The organization works with students who are seeking recovery from substance misuse.  

Since 2015, 70 CRC members have graduated from Ohio State, with another six scheduled to graduate in the spring. 

“There are so many moments of pride,” Hosni said when asked about memories from the last decade. “There have been students you weren’t sure were going to get across the finish line. When they did, it felt momentous.”

One of the significant changes Hosni noted between 2024 and 2015 is that the CRC is fully enmeshed in the university today.

“What comes with time is developing roots in a community,” he said. “I think our program is something that folks know about now. We’ve worked hard to raise awareness about the program. I believe we are one of the flagship collegiate recovery communities in the country.”

In addition to community support, the CRC’s financial support has also grown.

“We started with a grant, some hopes and some dreams,” Hosni said. “Now we have two funded scholarship endowments, and we receive support from alumni who care about this program and care about the idea that students in recovery deserve the opportunity to have a safe place on campus to pursue their dreams. [We all believe] that having a substance-use disorder doesn’t mean your life is over. You can reinvent yourself.”

The focus of the CRC has always been students, said Mackenzie Hogan, the CRC’s wellness coordinator. What has changed over the years is how students approach their recovery.

“I think we’re seeing more diverse pathways to recovery,” she said. “That’s exciting because it brings new breath to the community and shows that there’s not one set way to do things.”

In addition to new recovery options, there are also new challenges for students, she said.

“One thing we’ve been looking at recently is gambling, which is now legal in the state,” she said. “What does it look like to make sure we have at least informal support for students who need us for that?”

Helping students beyond Ohio State’s reach is now a priority for the CRC as well, Hosni said.

“We’ve found a formula that works for supporting students,” he said, “no matter what walk of life they come from. I’m excited for us to be able to share that in a meaningful way with as many people as possible. We can positively influence college students that we’ll never meet.”

As Hosni looks back on the last 10 years, he is sure that part of the CRC’s success is an unwillingness to settle for average.

“I think if nothing changed and the CRC stayed in Baker Hall and continued to support students and help staff and faculty understand how to back students through our training, everyone would be happy,” he said. “But that’s not the Buckeye way. We want to keep pushing the envelope. We want to keep growing this thing and see how we can make a better experience for students, how we can contribute to the growing field of recovery programs across the country.”

A new study has found that stress, through its propensity to drive up inflammation in the body, is also linked to metabolic syndrome – leading researchers to suggest that cheap and relatively easy stress-management techniques may be one way to help improve biological health outcomes. 

“We were specifically examining people in midlife – a time that is critical to determine those who will experience accelerated aging. Stress is an important contributor to several negative health outcomes as we age,” said senior author Jasmeet Hayes, associate professor of psychology at The Ohio State University. 

“There are many variables that influence metabolic syndrome, some we can’t modify, but others that we can. Everybody experiences stress,” Hayes said. “And stress management is one modifiable factor that’s cost-effective as well as something people can do in their daily lives without having to get medical professionals involved.” 

The research was published recently in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity – Health. 

Links between stress and biological health are established, but few previous studies had looked specifically at the involvement of inflammation in stress’s connection to metabolic syndrome. 

People with metabolic syndrome are diagnosed with at least three of five factors that increase the risk for heart disease, diabetes and other health issues – excess belly fat, high blood pressure, low HDL (good) cholesterol, and high levels of fasting blood glucose and triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood. The condition is also referred to as insulin resistance syndrome. 

Using data from a sample of 648 participants (average age 52) in a national survey titled Midlife in the United States, first author Savana Jurgens built a statistical model to gauge how inflammation may fit into the relationship between stress and metabolic syndrome. Respondents’ reported perceived stress, blood biomarkers for inflammation, and physical exam results indicating risk factors for metabolic syndrome were used for the analysis. 

“There’s not much research that has looked at all three variables at one time,” said Jurgens, a psychology graduate student in Hayes’ lab. “There’s a lot of work that suggests stress is associated with inflammation, inflammation is associated with metabolic syndrome, and stress is associated with metabolic syndrome. But putting all those pieces together is rare.” 

Inflammation composite scores were calculated using biomarkers that included the better-known IL-6 and C-reactive protein as well as E-selectin and ICAM-1, which help recruit white blood cells during inflammation, and fibrinogen, a protein essential to blood clot formation. 

The statistical modeling showed that stress does indeed have a relationship with metabolic syndrome, and inflammation explained over half of that connection – 61.5%, to be exact. 

“There is a small effect of perceived stress on metabolic syndrome, but inflammation explained a large proportion of that,” Jurgens said. 

The results made sense – stress is just one of many factors that can launch health markers into a state of disarray. Other factors include a range of behaviors including inactivity, unhealthy eating habits, smoking and poor sleep, as well as low socioeconomic status, advanced age and being female.   

But considering that an estimated 1 in 3 American adults has metabolic syndrome, knowing how to lower risk or prevent it altogether is important, Hayes said. The findings also add to evidence that stress, and its connection to inflammation, can have a big impact on biological health in general. 

“People think of stress as mental health, that it’s all psychological. It is not. There are real physical effects to having chronic stress,” Hayes said. “It could be inflammation, it could be metabolic syndrome, or a number of things. This is another reminder of that.” 

Future work will include a closer look at whether stress has a causal effect on metabolic syndrome and assessing stress management techniques that may be best for helping reduce inflammation. 

This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging and Ohio State’s Discovery Themes Chronic Brain Injury Program, where Hayes is an investigator. Co-author Sarah Prieto of Ohio State also contributed to the study.

Ali, who is serving as the spokesperson in the 42nd annual Blood Battle between The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan, doesn’t enjoy having his blood taken, he said. But he reminds himself that the people who do that work are the best ones for it.

“Imagine who’s the best at doing it,” said Ali, medical director of University Hospital, physician and clinical professor of internal medicine. “The people that do it every day, multiple times a day. … I haven’t met a person in a blood drive who isn’t an expert at what they do.”

The battle began on Oct. 25 and will end on Nov. 22. Forty-eight blood drives are being held across the university’s campus. The winner will receive the Blood Battle trophy during halftime on Nov. 25, when the Buckeyes face the Wolverines on the football field. Ohio State topped Michigan in donations last year and is looking to do it again.

“Healthy competition is a great way [to raise awareness about the need for blood products],” Ali said. “It’s an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, let’s take something we love to rally around – our love for the university, our love for the Buckeyes and our love of sports – and visit a blood donation site around the university.’”

In addition to his work as a physician, Ali plays an administrative role in the university’s blood supply. As medical director of University Hospital, he works with an interdepartmental team to monitor blood supply levels.

“It was an easy step when I was asked to be the spokesperson for this year’s Blood Battle. I said, ‘Sign me up’ because I live it every day.”

Donations don’t take long: People are usually finished in an hour. Each donation can save as many as three lives, which are most likely in the Columbus community.

“[The donations] will most likely be used locally because it’s a resource that has to be handled carefully,” Ali said. “It’s not like a monetary donation to a national organization. You know when you’re doing it that it’s going to be used in the supply chain in your area. You really are giving back to the patients that we’re caring for here.”

Blood transfusions are routinely used for both long-term and immediate care. Around 1 in 7 people in the hospital require them, Ali said.

In emergency situations, timely access to blood can make a significant difference in a patient’s recovery.

“There’s something called ‘the golden hour’ of resuscitation in trauma injuries,” Ali said. “You have to do as much as you can within the first hour of something like a car accident. If you’re delayed because you don’t have resources like blood, the outcomes of those patients get worse with each hour lost.”

When people are hospitalized for longer periods of time, they often need blood transfusions to support their healing.

“Sometimes patients who are critically ill, their metabolism has shifted so much as they’re trying to heal that they don’t produce as much blood as they normally would,” Ali said. “Their blood counts start to drift down so we need to provide them that help.”

Helping people understand a hospital’s many needs for blood is part of his role as spokesperson, Ali said. Another is emphasizing blood donations can be part of a person’s routine. He donates several times a year. Following established guidelines, a person can donate as often as every 56 days, he said.  

“How do you communicate that to folks? You tell people how easy it is to give blood,” Ali said. “It’s quick, it’s simple. You can be done in under an hour. And it’s impactful.”

For information about where to donate, visit Versiti’s website: https://versiti.org/ways-to-give/annual-blood-drives/ohio-state-vs-michigan-blood-battle.

The Ohio State University study in cell cultures found the omega-3 fatty acid DHA may help protect the brain from an unhealthy diet’s effects by curbing fat-induced inflammation at the cellular source. 

Separate experiments using brain tissue from aging mice showed a high-fat diet may lead specific brain cells to overdo cell-signaling management in a way that interferes with the creation of new memories. 

The same lab found in an earlier study in aging rats that a diet of highly processed ingredients led to a strong inflammatory response in the brain that was accompanied by behavioral signs of memory loss – and that DHA supplementation prevented those problems. 

“The cool thing about this paper is that for the first time, we’re really starting to tease these things apart by cell type,” said senior author Ruth Barrientos, an investigator in Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and neuroscience in the College of Medicine. 

“Our lab and others have often looked at the whole tissue of the hippocampus to observe the brain’s memory-related response to a high-fat diet. But we’ve been curious about which cell types are more or less affected by these saturated fatty acids, and this is our first foray into determining that.”

The study was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. 

For this work, the researchers focused on microglia, cells in the brain that promote inflammation, and hippocampal neurons, which are important for learning and memory. They used immortalized cells – copies of cells taken from animal tissue that are modified to continuously divide and respond only to lab-based stimulation, meaning their behavior may not precisely match that of primary cells of the same type. 

Researchers exposed these model microglia and neurons to palmitic acid, the most abundant saturated fatty acid in high-fat foods like lard, shortening, meat and dairy products, to observe how it affected gene activation in the cells as well as functioning of mitochondria, structures inside cells that have a primary metabolic role of generating energy. 

Results showed the palmitic acid prompted gene expression changes linked to an increase in inflammation in both microglia and neurons, though microglia had a wider range of affected inflammatory genes. Pre-treatment of these cells with a dose of DHA, one of two omega-3 fatty acids in fish and other seafood and available in supplement form, had a strong protective effect against the increased inflammation in both cell types. 

“Previous work has shown that DHA is protective in the brain and that palmitic acid has been detrimental to brain cells, but this is the first time we’ve looked at how DHA can directly protect against the effects of palmitic acid in those microglia, and we see that there is a strong protective effect,” said Michael Butler, first author of the study and a research scientist in Barrientos’ lab. 

When it came to the mitochondria, however, DHA did not prevent the loss of function that followed exposure to palmitic acid. 

“The protective effects of DHA might, in this context, be restricted to effects on gene expression related to the pro-inflammatory response as opposed to the metabolic deficits that the saturated fat also induced,” Butler said. 

In another set of experiments, the researchers looked at how a diet high in saturated fat influenced signaling in the brains of aged mice by observing another microglial function called synaptic pruning. Microglia monitor signal transmission among neurons and nibble away excess synaptic spines, the connection sites between axons and dendrites, to keep communication at an ideal level. 

Microglia were exposed to mouse brain tissue containing both pre- and post-synaptic material from animals that had been fed either a high-fat diet or regular chow for three days. 

The microglia ate the synapses from aged mice fed a high-fat diet at a faster rate than they ate synapses from mice fed a regular diet – suggesting the high-fat diet is doing something to those synapses that gives the microglia a reason to eat them at a higher rate, Butler said. 

“When we talk about the pruning, or refinement, that needs to occur, it’s like Goldilocks: It needs to be optimal – not too much and not too little,” Barrientos said. “With these microglia eating away too much too soon, it outpaces the ability for these spines to regrow and create new connections, so memories don’t solidify or become stable.” 

From here, the researchers plan to expand on findings related to synaptic pruning and mitochondria function, and to see how palmitic acid and DHA effects play out in primary brain cells from young versus aged animals. 

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Additional co-authors, all from Ohio State, were Sabrina Mackey-Alfonso, Nashali Massa and Kedryn Baskin.

Using data from the Women’s Health Initiative, researchers found that 81% of colorectal cancer survivors reported persistent GI symptoms, with abdominal bloating and gas topping the list as the most common and severe problem. The average time since diagnosis was eight years for all participants whose data was used in the study. 

The analysis also showed that severe GI symptoms were linked to poor quality of life, interference with daily social and physical activities, and low body image satisfaction. 

“Many cancer treatments show great success, and many cancer survivors are living longer than ever before,” said lead study author Claire Han, assistant professor of nursing at The Ohio State University. “GI symptoms among survivors have been under-investigated in the past, but we found that they are very prevalent even up to 25 years after diagnosis, suggesting it’s very important to consider GI symptom management as part of their survivorship care.” 

The study was published recently in the journal PLOS ONE.

While depression, anxiety and fatigue are commonly monitored following cancer diagnosis and treatment, Han said that when she was working as a nurse practitioner, she heard from many colorectal cancer survivors that they were experiencing GI symptoms and having a hard time finding relief. 

This secondary analysis cannot identify the reasons for the symptoms, but the location of cancer in the colon and rectum and treatment-related effects on the gut and the microbes living there could be a factor, said Han, also an investigator in the Cancer Control Program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

The study did show that GI symptoms were accompanied by the psychological distress experienced by many cancer survivors – but whether gut problems were causes or consequences of quality-of-life issues, particularly fatigue, sleep problems, depression and anxiety, could not be determined. 

“Cancer survivors with high psychological symptoms may have a higher stress level that could inflame the gut and lead to GI symptoms,” Han said. “The causal direction could be bidirectional – which comes first doesn’t really matter because both types of symptoms are present.” 

Data on 413 colorectal cancer survivors for this research came from the Women’s Health Initiative’s Life and Longevity After Cancer (LILAC) Study involving postmenopausal women who had been diagnosed with certain types of cancer. Their average age was 71 years, with an average age at the time of diagnosis of almost 63. Among the sample, 63.2% had undergone surgery for their cancer, and 34.4% had received multiple treatments, including surgery and chemoradiation.

The secondary analysis included data from questionnaires assessing a variety of measures, including demographics, GI symptoms, non-GI symptoms, dietary habits and physical activity, as well as how these measures affected quality of life. 

Han said this is the first study in cancer survivors to document the impact of individual GI symptoms versus considering gut issues all together in a cluster. 

Abdominal bloating and gas was reported by 54.2% of participants (17.2% patients reported moderate to severe symptoms), followed by constipation (44.1% overall, 12.6% moderate to severe), diarrhea (33.4% overall, 10.4% moderate to severe) and abdominal/pelvic pain (28.6% overall, 6.8% moderate to severe). When all symptoms were combined into a composite score, 15.4% of survivors reported moderate to severe overall GI symptoms. 

Being within five years of diagnosis and surviving a stage III cancer were associated with a higher likelihood of reporting persistent GI symptoms. And the severity of depression, anxiety, fatigue and sleep problems was higher in the GI symptom group than in women without GI symptoms. 

These and other findings suggest the need for comprehensive interventions for colorectal cancer survivors, Han said, such as psychosocial support, pain management, individualized nutritional counseling and physical rehabilitation. 

Han is an investigator in the Center for Healthy Aging, Self-Management and Complex Care in Ohio State’s College of Nursing. Co-authors Electra Paskett and Matthew Kalady of Ohio State also worked on the study with co-authors Kerryn Reding, Rachel Yung and Heather Greenlee of the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. 

The WHI is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

For many in the study sample, however, losing a “clinically significant” 5% of their body weight did not eliminate their risk factors for cardiovascular disease, results showed. In fact, the average composite score on eight risk factors for heart disease was the same across the entirety of the study population – regardless of reported weight changes, up or down.

The study is the first to compare weight-loss strategies and results in the context of the American Heart Association’s “Life’s Essential 8,” a checklist promoting heart disease risk reduction through the pursuit of recommended metrics for body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, smoking, physical activity, diet and sleep. The AHA first defined a construct of cardiovascular health with “Life’s Simple 7” metrics in 2010, and updated the recommendations to the “Life’s Essential 8” in June 2022.

The Ohio State University researchers found that overall, U.S. adults had an average score of 60 out of 100 on the eight measures – suggesting there is plenty of room for improvement even among those whose diet and exercise behaviors helped move the needle on some metrics.

“The Life’s Essential 8 is a valuable tool that provides the core components for cardiovascular health, many of which are modifiable through behavior change,” said senior study author Colleen Spees, associate professor of medical dietetics in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Ohio State. 

“Based on the findings in this study, we have a lot of work to do as a country,” she said. “Even though there were significant differences on several parameters between the groups, the fact remains that as a whole, adults in this country are not adopting the Life’s Essential 8 behaviors that are directly correlated with heart health.”

The research was published recently in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Data for the analysis came from 20,305 U.S. adults aged 19 or older (average age of 47) who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2007 and 2016. Participants reported their smoking status, physical activity, average hours of sleep per night, weight history and weight loss strategy, and what they had eaten in the previous 24 hours. Health exams and lab tests measured their body mass index, blood pressure, LDL (bad) cholesterol and blood glucose.

The Ohio State researchers used the data to determine individuals’ values for Life’s Essential 8 metrics and assessed their diet quality according to the Healthy Eating Index, which gauges adherence to U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Within the sample, 17,465 individuals had lost less than 5% of their body weight, maintained their weight or gained weight in the past year. The other 2,840 reported intentional loss of at least 5% of their body weight in the same time frame.

“Clinically significant weight loss results in improvements in some health indices,” Spees said. “People should feel hopeful in knowing that losing just 5% of their body weight is meaningful in terms of clinical improvements. This is not a huge weight loss. It’s achievable for most, and I would hope that incentivizes people instead of being paralyzed with a fear of failure.”

In this study, adults with clinically significant weight loss reported higher diet quality, particularly with better scores on intakes of protein, refined grains and added sugar, as well as more moderate and vigorous physical activity and lower LDL cholesterol than the group without clinically significant weight loss. On the other hand, the weight-loss group also had a higher average BMI and HbA1c blood sugar measure and fewer hours of sleep – all metrics that would bring down their composite Life’s Essential 8 score.

A greater proportion of people who did not lose at least 5% of their weight reported skipping meals or using prescription diet pills as weight-loss strategies. Additional strategies reported by this group included low-carb and liquid diets, taking laxatives or vomiting, and smoking.

“We saw that people are still gravitating to non-evidence-based approaches for weight loss, which are not sustainable. What is sustainable is changing behaviors and eating patterns,” Spees said.

With federal data estimating that more than 85% of the adult U.S. population will be overweight or obese by 2030 (compared to the current rate of 73%), Spees said that to fend off related increases in heart disease and other health problems, a paradigm shift toward prevention is in order.

“We absolutely need to be moving toward prevention of disease versus waiting until people are diagnosed with a disease. This becomes quite overwhelming, and individuals may feel it’s too late at that point,” she said.

One idea to consider, she said, would be prescriptions for regular visits with registered dietitians trained in behavior change, complete with insurance reimbursement – similar to physical therapy.

“We have fantastic research, we have incredible educators,” she said. “What we don’t have is policy that promotes optimal health across the lifespan, from pregnancy through older adulthood.”

Co-authors of the study included first author Emily Hill (supported by a National Center for Advancing Clinical Sciences fellowship), Lauren Cubellis, Randell Wexler and Christopher Taylor.

The event, organized by the Wellness Advocacy student organization, was attended by Ohio State students, faculty and staff as well as Buckeye Paws therapy dogs. Throughout the discussion, Day emphasized the importance of resilience.

“Adversity is coming down the road, so we have to build this resilience up,” he said. “You’re going to be ready for it the more you prepare for it.”

Day likened mental health to physical health, saying that much like physical health, individuals can strengthen their mental health and build resilience over time.

In addition to the similarities between physical and mental health, Day discussed how physical wellness is a key contributor to mental wellness, citing tennis and spending time outdoors as tools he uses to improve and maintain his mood. He also enjoys spending time with loved ones and unplugging.

Day said that a support system is crucial for building resilience, and that having people in your life who will help you and provide honesty when needed is essential. He urged the audience to lean on those closest to them when dealing with adversity.

“Being willing to ask for help is a sign of strength,” he said.

Mental health is a deeply personal issue for Day, who lost his father to suicide when he was 9 years old.

“It’s a hard thing to understand, especially when you’re young,” he said. “As time has gone on, I’ve recognized and learned to share my story. It took a long time.”

Last year, Day and his wife Nina donated $1 million to the university to create the Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund, which supports research and mental health resources.

“Hopefully, in 10 to 20 years, we can find out what those risk factors are that lead to mental illness,” he said. “It’s humbling to be a part of something that’s so progressive.”

Day reminded the audience that handling difficult topics becomes easier the more you discuss them, which is why he is such a vocal advocate for reducing the stigma surrounding mental health challenges.

“The more you talk to others about it, you find that people share a lot of the same experiences,” he said. “You can find some comfort in that.”

Day acknowledged that men, especially athletes, tend to experience a unique stigma when dealing with mental health issues. Day refers to the holistic approach to the team’s wellness as the “circle of care,” which includes resources ranging from proper nutrition to cryogenic chambers to sports psychologists. He discussed the importance of creating an environment for his players to feel comfortable asking for help and receiving care.

“The game of football is a fight, but so is life. It’s a fight to become the best version of yourself every day.”

“The university recognizes that we need an event of this nature, something that invites people into a conversation about mental health,” said Laura Lewis, assistant director of The Ohio State University Suicide Prevention Program (OSUSPP).

RUOK? Day is led by the Buckeye Campaign Against Suicide (BCAS), a student group that works with OSUSPP. The goal is for attendees to learn how to talk about mental health and suicide, and to feel comfortable reaching out to someone who needs help.

The event is free to attend and requires no registration, just an open mind and a willingness to learn, Lewis said. There are five sections, each one represented by a letter or the question mark in RUOK? The letters stand for:

• R – Resources in the community
• U – University offices and resources
• O – Student organizations
• K – Knowledge
• ? – Asking difficult questions

“We’re trying to arm people with some confidence and some competence and willingness to engage,” she said. “When they leave the event, we hope they won’t be as afraid to open up. A conversation can save a life.”

Lewis tells the story of a student wearing a shirt from a previous year’s event who was stopped on campus by another student.

“The student who wasn’t wearing the shirt stopped and turned around to say, ‘you know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ My understanding is that with help from the student wearing the shirt, the student, who was in distress, was able to get support immediately.”

This year’s event will be the first in-person, at-capacity RUOK? Day since the COVID-19 pandemic began. After three years of limited in-person and virtual events, BCAS worked hard to incorporate best practices from both types of experiences.

“We really listened over the last couple of years,” said Fatimah Masood, a graduate student and graduate teaching assistant for BCAS. “We’ve tried to listen to what people need.”

“We’re trying to keep this as inclusive as possible,” added Caroline Ingraham, a fourth-year undergraduate and BCAS president.

In fact, the location alone allows for more interactions, Ingraham said. The Ohio Union is sees plenty of heavy foot traffic, with students studying, eating and otherwise spending time in the facility. Ingraham and Masood agreed that this leads to more people attending the event.

“There’s something special about being able to speak one-on-one, to get resources in-person,” Ingraham said. “Maybe you’re here just for the snacks but at the end of the day, you can have a conversation with someone who could help you.”

While the location has not changed, this year’s RUOK? Day is happening at a different time. In the past, the event was held on a Thursday evening, Lewis said. This year, it’s happening on a Friday afternoon.

“We figured we’d try lunchtime because we see a lot of students in the Union,” Masood said. “And it’s a Friday, so people may not be in as much of a hurry.”

Having the university’s support makes this important work easier, the BCAS members agreed.

“It makes me proud as a student to attend a university that makes mental health resources accessible to students,” Ingraham said. “I’m grateful we’re able to have a space to bring people together.”

“We are pleased and proud to host the Give Veterans a Smile event,” said Carroll Ann Trotman, dean of the college. “As a college that is dedicated to training dental professionals and providing oral health care, we are glad to offer dental services to communities and people in need, including veterans throughout Ohio.”

“In Ohio, dental care is one of the biggest health care needs for veterans,” said Paul Georgin, a fourth-year dental student and the event’s coordinator. Georgin is attending Ohio State through an Air Force scholarship. After graduating, he will serve his active-duty years as a military dentist.

The college treated 22 veterans at last year’s event and hopes to have 25 this fall. The Ohio State name carries a lot of weight with veterans, Georgin said. They are often excited to be getting care from the school that is home to their favorite football team.  

“Ohio State is a pillar of hope. It’s something to believe in,” he said. “The university is so big and there are so many opportunities here. We’d be remiss not to share that with veterans.”

Dental care is often overlooked, Georgin said. And that can lead to discomfort and pain.

“A friend of mine coined the phrase ‘teeth are not luxury bones,’” Georgin said. “Your mouth goes through a tremendous amount of trauma throughout your life. Often, people don’t realize what problems they have.”

Having access to quality dental care can make a huge difference in a person’s life, he added.

“Knowledge of your oral health status is power,” he said. “You don’t have to make a decision about treatment today. But allowing people to understand what’s happening in their mouths, and to be able to do that for free, that’s awesome.”

For Georgin, it is an opportunity to give something tangible to a community that means so much to him.

“For the first time in my life, I feel like I have the skills to help someone,” he said. “What gets me going every day is helping people and being hands-on.”  

This excitement isn’t unique to Georgin. Shifts to staff the event fill up quickly, he said. Participation in the event isn’t limited to dental providers, meaning anyone in the college can help.

“The students get really excited,” he said. “We need people greeting vets at the door or showing them to their appointment. It’s a big building! Having someone help you navigate can relieve some stress.”

For students and patients, Georgin sees Ohio State as a “common rallying point.”

“People in Ohio like Ohio State,” he said. “The university putting together a program like this and getting involved with the veteran community, that’s important.”

For more information, visit the college’s website.

“We absolutely take advantage of the fact that Recovery Month is one of the first things to happen on campus after students arrive,” he said. “We appreciate the opportunity to share all that we do during Recovery Month. It’s a great platform for us to talk about the work we do to support people who are seeking recovery at Ohio State.”

For the duration of September, members of the Ohio State community can participate in recovery-related events, including Naloxone training, sober tailgating, yoga, recovery meetings and art classes. The holistic approach to recovery is essential to successful outcomes, said Mackenzie Hogan, the CRC’s program coordinator.

“Recovery is the whole picture,” she said. “If I just focus on the recovery part but not who I am as a person, I won’t be as successful. The facets of wellness are all interconnected.”

For some people in recovery, these non-traditional events may take the place of 12-step meetings. Hosni noted that programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, with a heavy Judeo-Christian foundation, may be off-putting to some students. So, beginning this year, the CRC is hosting non-secular SMART (Self-Management and Recovery Training) meetings. SMART is a science-based, self-empowering program that can be used to manage recovery from any type of addictive behavior.

“We are going to support students, no matter which pathway they choose to establish and sustain their recovery,” Hosni said.

Recovery Month is not just for Buckeyes in recovery, Hogan said.

“Recovery is for everyone,” she said. “Especially living in Ohio, I believe almost everyone has been touched by recovery in some way.”

There will be a recovery ally training on Sept. 15. The training is open to students, faculty and staff. The goal of the two-hour program is to teach participants to create an environment where those in recovery or seeking it can ask for help and feel empowered and celebrated.

Hosni began the ally trainings, the first at any university, in 2015. By 2017, he was presenting the idea at a national conference.

“It’s really taken off,” he said. “It’s a point of pride for us that Ohio State was the first school to do it. We’re excited to be able to contribute to the field of collegiate recovery in that way.”

“Here at Ohio State, if someone is struggling, we want them to be able to get help,” Hosni added. “Having people who identify as recovery allies, who understand the resources, who are willing to have meaningful conversations with people who might be struggling, that creates an environment where help-seeking behavior is encouraged.”

Celebrating recovery can help combat the stigma surrounding it, Hosni said. Even if a person is not ready to begin their recovery journey, knowing that they will be treated with respect when the time comes can make a difference.

“You are planting a seed,” Hosni said. “You may not be around to see it blossom. The idea that recovery is possible, and that recovery is worth striving for, those messages will be heard by students who may find recovery once they’re alumni. We want them to know that the university they love so much cares about them, too.”

In fact, Hosni said, alumni often attend CRC events after graduating because of the community they find there. This community is the key to recovery and the backbone of Recovery Month.

“As great as Mackenzie and I are, the most important people for those students, who are struggling, are their peers. Community is always the answer.”

A new football season meant that the CRC’s Scarlet and Gray Tailgates were also back. The events feature free food and non-alcoholic drinks, music and games.

“We want to create spaces where student can have fun before the games,” Hosni said. “If they want to be in an atmosphere where there isn’t any alcohol or substance use, they can find that here. We have games, free food, fun.”

The tailgates have been a part of the CRC’s programming since 2014 and they have always been popular. Hosni said typical attendance is anywhere from 500 to 1,000 students. In addition to the Notre Dame season opener, there will be a sober tailgate at the Arkansas State game on Sept. 10. Financial support determines the number of events the community can host each year.

Grant Warner, a political science student, was a first-time participant. He saw the tailgate as he walked through the north campus area with friends before the football game.

“We’re enjoying it,” he said. “We played Spikeball, threw some footballs. Now we’re playing cornhole.”  

The tailgates were previously held by the RPAC but moved to the north residential district of Ohio State’s campus in the hopes of attracting more students, whether they are drinking or not.  

“For students who may decide to drink, this is an opportunity to get them some water and make sure they get something to eat before they go to the next party or to the game,” Hosni said. “This is an opportunity to help students have better outcomes.”

Hosni is proud of the tailgates. Football events can often revolve around drinking, which may not be a safe environment for students in recovery. The CRC provides an alternative for Buckeye fans, he said.

“It’s great to watch them have fun with their friends, friends who are making similar decisions, and feel that excitement for Ohio State games,” he said. “They get to experience what it means to be a Buckeye on game days. It’s the best.”

September is Recovery Month at Ohio State. For more information about the CRC and Recovery Month events, visit go.osu.edu/recoverymonth

Library users now have access to a wellness workspace that includes a bike desk, a treadmill desk and two standing desks. All can be found on the main floor of the building.

“This is part of the university’s focus on wellness,” said Nancy Colvin, director of strategic marketing and communications for University Libraries. “We know that is a top priority for Ohio State and we know that physical activity is one dimension of wellness, so we want to make certain that we’re doing what we can to support that here.”

Students can thank Paul Baskin for the new equipment. Baskin, a third-year medical student, was used to working at a treadmill desk during his undergraduate years. He reached out to the University Libraries’ team to see if the same thing would be possible at Thompson Library. He was surprised by how quickly the change was made.

“I just sent an email and they said, ‘let’s have a Zoom,’” Baskin said. “I did not expect it to happen this fast.”

Alison Armstrong, University Libraries’ assistant director for research and education, said she values student input.

“You’re hearing directly from a key constituent group,” Armstrong said. “There are so many students on campus; we try to engage with them and to anticipate their needs. When we hear from them directly, we know we’re heading down the right path.”

Baskin said that for many students, long hours studying can leave little free time for exercise.

“Having this is a nice thing. I can come and walk four miles while I study, then go home. I’ve done two things at the same time,” he said.

In addition to Thompson Library, a second wellness workspace is open in the Health Sciences Library.

“We’ll pilot it [at Thompson Library] for a semester or two, see what usage looks like. We’ll keep track of that and get some feedback from students,” Armstrong said. “We’ll determine whether it’s something we want to expand, keep or relocate to another part of the building or a different part of campus, but we’re pretty excited.”

The Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund will be housed in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. Their gift is indicative of the Days’ deep commitment to encouraging young adults to seek help for behavioral health challenges.

The Days have long been advocates of care and open discussions about mental health. This cause is personal to Ryan Day, whose father died of suicide when he was 8 years old. Ryan Day began speaking out in 2018 after a recruiting trip to a high school that had experienced multiple recent student suicides led him to confront his long-suppressed pain. Mental health support is a key pillar of the “Circle of Care” Day maintains for athletes in his program, with two full-time psychologists, two athletic counselors and a part-time psychiatrist on staff.

There are few more important messages for young people in 2022, said Ohio State University President Kristina M. Johnson.

“Supporting and building resilience in our fellow Buckeyes always has been a priority for Ohio State, but the past few years have made it more important than ever,” Johnson said. “I am so thankful to Nina and Ryan Day for their leadership and their generous gift. It will help us not only provide greater services and outreach, but to continue the fight against the stigma that too often discourages people in need from seeking help.”

As co-keynote speakers at Ohio State’s pandemic-delayed commencement in August 2021, Nina and Ryan Day both spoke of their own mental health struggles and urged graduates to find friends and loved ones who could bolster them in difficult times.

“Nina and I both understand how important it is to have someone you can turn to for help and strength in times of difficulty,” Ryan Day said. “Our hope is that this fund will allow more Buckeyes to find the support they need to become more resilient.”

Dr. K. Luan Phan, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, thanked the Days for “helping to dismantle the stigma of mental health challenges,” saying that dispelling stigma is essential to building resilience.

“With the support of champions like Nina and Ryan, we are quickly gaining ground and shifting the paradigm toward a positive outlook against adversity that includes hope, perseverance, courage and growth” he said. “We hope their generous gift will inspire others to support this worthy cause.”

Researchers said this is the first study assessing whether the health risks linked to the condition known as metabolic syndrome, which affects about one-third of Americans, may be diminished by green tea’s anti-inflammatory benefits in the gut.

“There is much evidence that greater consumption of green tea is associated with good levels of cholesterol, glucose and triglycerides, but no studies have linked its benefits at the gut to those health factors,” said Richard Bruno, senior study author and professor of human nutrition at The Ohio State University. 

The team conducted the clinical trial in 40 individuals as a follow-up to a 2019 study that associated lower obesity and fewer health risks in mice that consumed green tea supplements with improvements to gut health.

In the new study, green tea extract also lowered blood sugar, or glucose, and decreased gut inflammation and permeability in healthy people – an unexpected finding.

“What this tells us is that within one month we’re able to lower blood glucose in both people with metabolic syndrome and healthy people, and the lowering of blood glucose appears to be related to decreasing leaky gut and decreasing gut inflammation – regardless of health status,” Bruno said.

Articles on the glucose results and lowered gut permeability and inflammation were published recently in Current Developments in Nutrition. 

People with metabolic syndrome are diagnosed with at least three of five factors that increase the risk for heart disease, diabetes and other health problems – excess belly fat, high blood pressure, low HDL (good) cholesterol, and high levels of fasting blood glucose and triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood. 

The tricky thing about these risk factors that constitute metabolic syndrome is that they are often only slightly altered and do not yet require drug management, but still impose great risk to health, Bruno said.

“Most physicians will initially recommend weight loss and exercise. Unfortunately, we know most persons can’t comply with lifestyle modifications for various reasons,” he said. “Our work is aiming to give people a new food-based tool to help manage their risk for metabolic syndrome or to reverse metabolic syndrome.” 

Forty participants – 21 with metabolic syndrome and 19 healthy adults – consumed gummy confections containing green tea extract rich in anti-inflammatory compounds called catechins for 28 days. The daily dose equaled five cups of green tea. In the randomized double-blind crossover trial, all participants spent another 28 days taking a placebo, with a month off of any supplement between the treatments. 

Researchers confirmed that participants, as advised, followed a diet low in polyphenols – naturally occurring antioxidants in fruits, vegetables, teas and spices – during the placebo and green tea extract confection phases of the study so any results could be attributed to the effects of green tea alone. 

Results showed that fasting blood glucose levels for all participants were significantly lower after taking green tea extract compared to levels after taking the placebo. Decreased gut inflammation due to the green tea treatment in all participants was established through an analysis that showed a reduction in pro-inflammatory proteins in fecal samples. Using a technique to assess sugar ratios in urine samples, researchers also found that with green tea, participants’ small intestine permeability favorably decreased. 

Gut permeability, or leaky gut, enables intestinal bacteria and related toxic compounds to enter the bloodstream, stimulating low-grade chronic inflammation.

“That absorption of gut-derived products is thought to be an initiating factor for obesity and insulin resistance, which are central to all cardiometabolic disorders,” Bruno said. “If we can improve gut integrity and reduce leaky gut, the thought is we’ll be able to not only alleviate low-grade inflammation that initiates cardiometabolic disorders, but potentially reverse them.

“We did not attempt to cure metabolic syndrome with a one-month study,” he said. “But based on what we know about the causal factors behind metabolic syndrome, there is potential for green tea to be acting at least in part at the gut level to alleviate the risk for either developing it or reversing it if you already have metabolic syndrome.” 

Bruno’s lab is completing further analyses of microbial communities in the guts of study participants and levels of bacteria-related toxins in their blood. 

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center at Ohio State. 

Ohio State co-authors of both papers include Min Zeng, Geoffrey Sasaki, Sisi Cao, Yael Vodovotz and Joanna Hodges. Avinash Pokala and Shahabeddin Rezaei also co-authored the paper on glucose reduction.

These fears can have such a hold on some people that they may get a flu shot one year, but skip it when the next season comes around, the survey results showed.

The pandemic enabled an evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine intention and uptake as well. Responses suggested that the combination of vaccine-related fears and feeling dizzy and lightheaded while getting a flu shot led some people to say they weren’t likely to get the COVID vaccine – and then not get it.

While researchers already knew these fears and symptoms exist, this study showing their impact on outcomes points to the need for interventions that address fear and potential dizziness at the time of vaccination – which hasn’t been studied very much, said study author Jennifer Kowalsky, assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University Newark campus.

“Interventions could be developed that help people face fears – people who want to get vaccinated but have fears holding them back,” Kowalsky said. “Beyond targeting fears, we could also improve the experience when the person is getting vaccinated to reduce the risk and severity of symptoms.”

The study was published recently in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

There is one technique recommended by the World Health Organization that could help people sustain oxygen flow to the brain – which may help fend off feelings of lightheadedness – when they’re getting a vaccine, Kowalsky noted. Called applied muscle tension, it involves crossing your legs and repeatedly tightening core and lower body muscles to briefly raise blood pressure. A 2018 study led by Kowalsky found this practice can reduce feelings of lightheadedness and dizziness (called vasovagal symptoms) with people highly fearful of blood and needles undergoing a simulated blood draw. She plans to further evaluate the technique’s effectiveness in vaccine settings. 

For the current study, Kowalsky recruited participants who were at least 18 years old and living in the United States through Amazon Mechanical Turk. She conducted three surveys over the course of almost two years, first asking 2,508 participants about the existence and severity of vaccine- and blood draw-related related fears in October 2019. 

In May and June 2020, she received responses from 1,077 of those participants (591 who had not gotten the most recent flu shot and 486 who had) about the degree of any feelings of faintness, dizziness, weakness and lightheadedness they experienced while getting their most recent flu shot. This survey also asked participants about their intention to get a flu vaccine the following season and a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available. In a final survey in June and July 2021, 643 remaining participants reported on whether they had received a flu and COVID-19 vaccine. 

Results showed that a younger age was linked to greater vaccine-related fears and more symptoms of dizziness and lightheadedness during and after a flu shot. And no matter what it was about vaccination that scared people – needles, pain, feeling faint or possible side effects – a higher level of overall fear was associated with more intense symptoms of dizziness or lightheadedness. 

“These symptoms have health and safety implications, because they increase the risk of falling,” Kowalsky said. “For clinicians, it’s relevant to have this in mind, that fear can predict those reactions. If someone shares they are feeling fearful, keeping a close eye on them is important because they may be at risk for those feelings of dizziness or lightheadedness.” 

A more detailed analysis of flu shot outcomes showed that having vaccine-related fears lowered intentions to get vaccinated, which in turn led to a decision not to get a shot – in some cases, even those who were vaccinated in the 2019-20 season opted out during the 2020-21 flu season.

“We should not assume that a person who has been vaccinated in the past will automatically get vaccinated again,” Kowalsky said. 

When it came to coronavirus vaccine decisions, a combination of fear and feelings of dizziness and lightheadedness with a 2019-20 flu shot contributed to lower uptake of the COVID-19 shots when they did become available, the analysis found. 

As a specialist in prosocial health behavior, or doing things that benefit the health of others, Kowalsky is extending her research program on fear and vasovagal symptoms’ influence on blood donation to vaccination, which has dropped globally since 2020 despite being one of the world’s most successful public health interventions. 

“People who are afraid to have blood drawn still give blood, and people who are afraid of vaccines still get vaccinated,” she said. “But knowing some don’t go through with getting a subsequent shot creates intervention opportunities to address the effect of fear on vaccine adopters. Their experience matters.”

This work was supported by an Ohio State University internal seed grant.

“I think the walk serves as a way for some folks to step a toe back into being together again and see how that feels, being surrounded by energy and love,” she said. “Some people have forgotten that that exists or are figuring out a way to get back to the world, not because they’re resistant to it, but because they haven’t done it in two years.”

The 2022 Out of the Darkness Walk will be Ohio State’s first in-person walk. The 2020 and 2021 events were held virtually, with people walking in their neighborhoods, due to the pandemic. It is one of 650 campus walks held around the country, all of which serve as fundraisers for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 15-24.

While the funds support the AFSP, OSUSPP receives indirect benefits from the donations, Lewis said. The university’s program relies heavily on the AFSP for research, programming and graphics.

Advocacy programming and events, like the Out of the Darkness Walk, are one of the office’s most used tools.

“What we know is most people want someone to ask if they’re OK. They want someone to be direct and clear because they can’t be,” Lewis said. “If we can be that bridge, if we can say, ‘I see what’s happening,’ then we can approach from our end and help that person take one step closer to us.”

Participants in this year’s event will gather at Larkins Plaza for opening remarks and activities before the group walks to and then around the Oval before returning to the plaza. A REACH training, OSUSPP’s signature program, will be held immediately after the event. The acronym represents the training’s five principles:

• Recognize warning signs
• Engage with empathy
• Ask directly about suicide
• Communicate hope
• Help suicidal individuals access care and treatment

Since the training began in 2013, more than 22,100 people have earned the designation of REACH Gatekeeper.

While the pandemic has demonstrated how easily people can connect over large distances, Lewis said there is power in a community gathering in one place.  

“You can come as a team, you can come on your own,” she said. “Let’s gather together in the spirit of hope and healing and remember those that we’ve lost. Let’s break open this conversation and reduce stigma by walking together.”

Recently, Ohio State football player Harry Miller medically retired from the team after experiencing significant mental health struggles, including suicidal ideation. Like so many, Lewis was impressed with Miller’s candor in discussing his decision.

“The courage to be so vulnerable and to be so transparent, he has reminded people that hope exists,” she said. “I like to think that people might seek us out if they’re feeling like Harry or if they want to help people like Harry.”  

The fundraising goal for this year’s Out of the Darkness Walk is $15,000. Registration for the event is available on the Suicide Prevention Program’s website.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, hope and healing exists! Please contact:

• Crisis Text Line: text ‘4hope’ to 741741
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK
• Local 24-Hour Crisis Phone Line: 614-221-5445
• 24-Hour Crisis Phone Line for Ohio State University Employees: 800-678-6265

The innovative program has served as a boon to the well-being of patient-facing medical employees since its launch in March 2020 – right before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Volunteers and their trained canine companions bring comfort and emotional support directly to medical center employees who wish to interact with the dogs. Now, Ohio State University community members on the academic side can request a visit from the animals.

President Kristina M. Johnson supports the expansion, which serves as another example of how the university promotes the health, safety and well-being of the Buckeye community.

“The Buckeye community has experienced a lot of challenges during the past two years. I’m so happy that the Buckeye Paws program is another way we can provide even more mental health support to our students, faculty and staff,” Johnson said. “As someone who has met the wonderful dogs in this program, I’m a firm believer in the impact animals can have on mental health and well-being.”

Research backs up program’s impact on health care employees

Though Buckeye Paws started in March 2020, the idea predated the pandemic. The health system’s employees were already under stress before the unprecedented surge of COVID-19 patients. Wexner Medical Center employees could use the comfort provided by the dogs, who meet the staff where they are, more than ever.

“The Buckeye Paws program has been an innovative way to help support our health care professionals as they care for others while balancing the stressors of the job, especially throughout the pandemic,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas, interim co-leader and chief clinical officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “The last two years have been particularly challenging for the health care workforce, and it’s been heartening to see the calming, uplifting effect these happy dogs have on our faculty, staff and learners. It’s truly exciting to see this program expand and be able to brighten the days of every Buckeye at Ohio State.”

Some Buckeye Paws handlers are trained in trauma-informed response. When used along with the comfort provided by the dogs, they can help to flesh out potential mental health problems from people who may not otherwise volunteer the information.

The dogs’ positive impact on staffers isn’t just anecdotal.

Ongoing research conducted by Wexner Medical Center employees and Buckeye Paws volunteers highlights its effectiveness. The self-reported mood of staff in the Intensive Care and Medical Surgical units increased by over 50% after interacting with the Buckeye Paws therapy dogs. 

“Our health care workers go through so much in the daily course of their jobs. While their interactions with the dogs won’t solve their stress, this research shows it can go a long way to boosting their morale and reducing stress,” said Beth Steinberg, staff development coordinator at the Wexner Medical Center.

Post-intervention data on perceived stress, burnout and work engagement are still being collected and will be reported after an analysis.

Steinberg helped coordinate the research and volunteers in Buckeye Paws with her yellow Labrador retriever, Brienne. Steinberg is a co-founder of Buckeye Paws, along with Mary Justice, associate executive director, patient care services and clinical transformation at the Wexner Medical Center, and Aimee Mitchell, program coordinator.

“The Buckeye Paws program has had such a positive impact on our patient care staff before and during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Jackie Buck, chief nursing officer. “When I’m visiting staff on the floors, it’s so rewarding to see the joy come over our staff when the dogs arrive on the unit. We’re so grateful to Mary Justice, Beth Steinberg and Aimee Mitchell for developing Buckeye Paws. It’s very exciting to see it expand to benefit students, faculty and staff across the Ohio State campus.”

How you can help
Dog handlers in Buckeye Paws are all volunteers who work at the Wexner Medical Center and choose to spend their time supporting their colleagues. 

The highly trained dogs, certified through the Alliance of Therapy Dogs, simply spend time with them, helping to provide holistic wellness.

There are 30 dogs in the program, with nine more undergoing training. The need for more volunteers and their dogs will continue with this large expansion. Any university employee and their dog can apply to go through the training program by clicking here.  

If you’re a student, faculty or staff member who would like to request a visit from Buckeye Paws, you can email BuckeyePaws@osumc.edu your name, contact info, reason for a visit and preferred date and time. Examples of approved visits could be for a student group meeting, a class ahead of exams or for a group of employees dealing with a stressful period.

The public is invited to meet some of the Buckeye Paws dogs and their handlers from 10 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, March 8, on the Oval near the Thompson Library.

Buckeye Paws is run mostly by volunteers, with one full-time employee. To support the programming, research, training and supplies, consider donating to the Buckeye Paws fund.

Jesse Owens North continues to provide COVID-19 testing but is no longer offering booster shots. With that change, the Wilce Student Health Center offers a convenient, central location for students, said Peggy Butauski, Allied Services manager in the Office of Student Life Student Health Services.

“It’s easy. Students can schedule themselves online,” Butauski said. “They can call in at any time, too.”         

Students can schedule appointments by visiting My BuckMD or by calling 614-292-4321. Appointments are available Wednesdays from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and Fridays from 1 to 4 p.m.

Ohio State offers booster shots according to eligibility standards set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Student Health Services is offering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Everyone 12 and older should get a booster shot if:

• You received your second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least five months ago.
• You received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago.

“The booster can enhance your protection from serious illness,” said Sheila Westendorf, Medical Director of Student Health Services. “Pfizer is one of the vaccines that’s recommended for some of our international students who may have gotten vaccinated outside of the United States.”

Individuals on regional campuses should use the Ohio Department of Health vaccine locator. 

Ohio State students, faculty and staff who receive and report their COVID-19 booster shots to the university are eligible for the Buckeye Booster Drawing. The incentive program is providing 100 prizes per week in the form of $100 gift cards through early April (with a pause for spring break in March). The third round of winners received their prizes today, bringing the total number of winners to 300. The deadline to register for the next drawing is Sunday, February 27 at 11:59 p.m. There are still five drawings remaining. 

To participate, students, faculty and staff must complete these steps: 

1.      Receive the COVID-19 booster dose.

2.     Submit your booster information to the university if you have not already done so. Students should report through My BuckMD. Employees should report through the Employee Health Record. 

3.     Enter the drawing by completing this form. 

Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage. 

The Buckeye Vaccinate Tailgate tour launches on Aug. 2 and features three stops at Kroger stores in Ohio. The tour offers a chance for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before the start of a new school year and a new Ohio State football season.

“We are all looking forward to getting back to enjoying our favorite Buckeye traditions, but we want to make sure we’re doing so safely. The Buckeye Vaccinate Tailgate tour offers these life-saving vaccines at no cost, no appointment and no hassle,” said Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson. “We are excited to welcome students back to campus and bring fans back together this fall in Ohio Stadium to cheer on our Buckeyes.”

“We are encouraging everyone to get vaccinated, and we are very appreciative and grateful that Kroger has partnered with the university on this tour that will bring numerous vaccination opportunities to locations around Ohio,” said Wolfe Foundation Senior Vice President and Director of Athletics Gene Smith. “Kroger is a partner in our Buckeyes Care program and this is yet another wonderful example of its commitment to important community service.”

Fans are encouraged to wear Buckeye gear at the tailgates, which will offer a chance to snap a selfie with Brutus, grab some free Ohio State swag, meet Buckeye “celebrities” and, most importantly, get a free COVID-19 vaccination.

“Kroger Health is here to help Ohio reach community immunity, using vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for every race, gender and various age groups,” said Steve Burson, Kroger Division health and wellness leader. “We remain committed to helping people live healthier lives and serving as an accessible and knowledgeable COVID-19 vaccination partner. We’re hopeful the Buckeye Vaccinate Tailgate will encourage more people to get vaccinated and prioritize their health and those they care about.”

Tailgate tour stops are set for the following dates, times and locations:

• Aug. 2, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Kroger Newark Marketplace, 1155 N. 21st St. in Newark
• Aug. 5, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Piqua Kroger, 1510 Covington Ave. in Piqua
• Aug. 6, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Lexington Avenue Kroger, 1500 Lexington Ave. in Mansfield

Clinic staff will be administering either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine based on availability and location. Attendees at the Buckeye Vaccinate Tailgate are encouraged to wear a mask and practice appropriate physical distancing.

Beginning this summer, a social worker from Southeast Healthcare will work in the off-campus area, with a special emphasis on North High Street, to provide outreach and offer resources and support to people who are homeless, housing insecure, or in need of other assistance. Southeast Healthcare, based in Ohio, has a long history of helping the state’s most vulnerable populations.

While the social worker’s coverage area includes campus itself, the person will focus on the adjacent University District area.

Offering proactive social service outreach in the University District is one of the recommendations made in Ohio State’s Task Force on Community Safety and Well-Being. Since its inception in fall 2020, the task force has put forth 15 recommendations that include a variety of strategies, acknowledging that “safety” means different things to different people.

As a highly trained Licensed Independent Social Worker, the person will also supervise College of Social Work undergraduate and graduate students who are acquiring experience as part of their in-the-field training. These students will gain valuable knowledge and build connections to the community, while extending the reach and impact of the new University District social worker.

“There’s a strong need for a dedicated professional to operate in the University District, and I’m thrilled that we can help meet it,” said College of Social Work Dean Tom Gregoire. “Our students will benefit greatly from this initiative and get a personal view of the issues that can lead to housing vulnerability.”

Once established, the social worker will work with community and university partners, including local businesses, law enforcement and students, staff and faculty, to get individuals help and assist with obtaining shelter and permanent supportive housing, counseling and treatment services. The social worker will make public their contact information to more easily connect with community members who may see someone who could use their services.

Ohio State continues to work to build a more empathetic community in the University District. Since February, for example, the Office of Student Life, through a grant from the Center for HumanKindness at the Columbus Foundation, has partnered with the College of Social Work and University District Organization to engage with people who are homeless or housing challenged in the North High Street area. Together, they’ve distributed 1,000 pairs of socks, hundreds of care bags and offered the services of a mobile health clinic operated by Southeast Healthcare. Ohio State has also partnered with the Reeb Avenue Center to distribute food vouchers and bus passes to those who need them.

The university has worked closely with the University District Organization on the new partnership. The nonprofit has helped to identify the needs of the off-campus community.

“Our partners in the University District have often asked how to best help the most vulnerable in the area,” said Matt Hansen, executive director of the University District Organization. “Dedicating a social worker to work full-time with this population is a great step toward providing people services and assistance they may need.”

When researchers analyzed the dietary intake of more than 30,000 American adults according to body mass index (BMI), the results also showed that people with BMIs in the obese range were the least likely to adhere to the dietary recommendations intended to reduce the risk for cancer.

The analysis measured self-reported dietary recalls and diet quality. Though the percentages of American adults who met each food source category differed, between almost 63% and 73% fell short of the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and roughly 90% failed to meet the 30 grams of fiber per day recommendation.

The cancer-prevention guidelines updated by the American Institute for Cancer Research
(AICR) in 2018 and the American Cancer Society nutrition and physical activity guideline closely mirror the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – suggesting that most U.S. adults are eating a suboptimal dietary pattern when it comes to nutrition-related disease prevention.

“We’re looking at individuals to move toward a primarily plant-based type of dietary pattern rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains and beans, peas, lentils, seeds and nuts – and cutting back on saturated fats and sodium,” said senior study author Colleen Spees, associate professor of medical dietetics in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The Ohio State University. “Modifying our current dietary and physical activity patterns to better align with these evidence-based guidelines over time is important to reduce the risk of noncommunicable disease and promote lifelong health and wellness.

“If Americans adopt these recommendations, they can reduce their risk of obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke and high blood pressure.”

The study is published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The research team used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which collects health information on a nationally representative sample of about 5,000 individuals in the U.S. every year through interviews, laboratory tests and physical exams.

The sample for this study included 30,888 adults age 18 and older. The Ohio State researchers analyzed data from 24-hour dietary recalls participants completed as part of the NHANES survey as well as their BMI.

Almost 70% of the sample were classified as overweight or obese, and adults in the obesity range (35.9% of all participants) were significantly less likely than other adults to meet recommended intakes of fiber, fruit, non-starchy vegetables and whole grains. Adults with obesity were also more likely to exceed the recommended 18 ounces per week of red meat and to have consumed fast food on the day of survey participation.

All groups, on average, consumed more added sugars than the recommended maximum of less than 10% of overall daily calories.

While basing the analysis on what survey participants reported eating over the previous 24 hours is a limitation of the study, Spees noted that previous studies have shown that 24-hour recalls can provide a representative snapshot of American dietary patterns.

Spees said these results may also reflect common “reductionist” views of dietary patterns among Americans – namely, the fixation on fad diets that often exclude certain food groups that the public is led to believe can cancel out a lifetime of marginal eating patterns.

“Is coconut oil good for me? Is a single egg good for me, or not?” she said. “That’s a reductionist view and perspective when what really shapes and defines our health outcomes throughout life are dietary patterns – the cumulative patterns over time, and over years – as well as our patterns of behaviors, including our physical activity, our sleep patterns, our stress levels.

“It almost appears as if many Americans believe that if they can’t follow all of the recommendations, why should they adhere to any of them? And that’s just not the case. These guidelines don’t have to be so prescriptive. Even little changes in behavior can have a huge impact. For instance, reducing added sugars can help individuals achieve and maintain a healthy weight status over time.”

The USDA and cancer-prevention agencies are the most reliable sources for not just what the guidelines are, but how to incorporate them into daily life, said Spees, also an investigator in Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Meeting some of the guidelines is far better than disregarding expert advice altogether, she said: Eat out at fast food restaurants a little less often and find tasty ways to incorporate more vegetables, grains and beans into meals prepared at home. If you can’t exercise the suggested 150 minutes per week, then simply sit less and move more. And as you make such changes, do it gradually, in a way that is sustainable – and ideally, for the rest of your life.

While this study found that people whose BMIs classify them as obese were the least likely to adhere to the guidelines, Spees said there is a bigger problem to consider: “Most Americans, regardless of weight status, have much to improve when it comes to dietary patterns.”

Co-authors include Madisyn Good, Ashlea Braun and Christopher Taylor, all from Ohio State.

An analysis of data on more than 30,000 American adults showed that skipping breakfast – and missing out on the calcium in milk, vitamin C in fruit, and the fiber, vitamins and minerals found in fortified cereals – likely left adults low on those nutrients for the entire day.

“What we’re seeing is that if you don’t eat the foods that are commonly consumed at breakfast, you have a tendency not to eat them the rest of the day. So those common breakfast nutrients become a nutritional gap,” said Christopher Taylor, professor of medical dietetics in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest dietary guidelines, calcium, potassium, fiber and vitamin D are considered “dietary components of public health concern” for the general U.S. population – with iron added for pregnant women – because shortages of those nutrients are associated with health problems.

Most research related to breakfast has focused on the effects of the missed morning meal on children in school, which includes difficulty focusing and behavioral problems.

“With adults, it’s more like, ‘You know how important breakfast is.’ But now we see what the implications really are if they miss breakfast,” Taylor said.

He completed the study with Ohio State College of Medicine graduate students Stephanie Fanelli and Christopher Walls. The research, which was supported by a regional dairy association, is published online in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society.

The team used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which collects health information on a nationally representative sample of about 5,000 people every year through interviews, laboratory tests and physical exams.

The sample for this study included 30,889 adults age 19 and older who had participated in the survey between 2005 and 2016. The Ohio State researchers analyzed data from 24-hour dietary recalls participants completed as part of the NHANES survey.

“During the recall, participants self-designate their eating occasions as a meal or a snack, and they tell you at what point in time they ate whatever food they report,” said Fanelli, first author of the study. “That’s how we determined whether someone was a breakfast eater or a breakfast skipper.”

In this sample, 15.2% of participants, or 4,924 adults, had reported skipping breakfast.

The researchers translated the food data into nutrient estimates and MyPlate equivalents using the federal Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies and daily dietary guidelines, and then compared those estimates to recommended nutrient intakes established by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies.

On several key recommendations measured, from fiber and magnesium to copper and zinc, breakfast skippers had taken in fewer vitamins and minerals than people who had eaten breakfast. The differences were most pronounced for folate, calcium, iron, and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C and D.

“We found those who skipped breakfast were significantly more likely not to meet the bottom threshold of what we hope to see people eat,” Fanelli said.

Compared to the Healthy Eating Index-2015, which assesses how well a set of foods aligns with federal recommendations, breakfast skippers also had an overall lower-quality diet than those who ate breakfast.

For example, breakfast skippers were more likely than those who noshed in the morning to eat more added sugars, carbohydrates and total fat over the course of the day – in part because of higher levels of snacking.

“Snacking is basically contributing a meal’s worth of calorie intakes for people who skipped breakfast,” Taylor said. “People who ate breakfast ate more total calories than people who didn’t eat breakfast, but the lunch, dinner and snacks were much larger for people who skipped breakfast, and tended to be of a lower diet quality.”

While the data represent a single day in each participant’s life, the huge sample provides a “nationally representative snapshot for the day,” Taylor said.

“It shows that those who skipped breakfast had one nutrient profile and those who ate breakfast had a different nutrient profile,” he said. “It helps us identify on any given day that this percentage of people are more likely to be skipping breakfast. And on that day, their dietary intake pattern showed that their consumption didn’t capture those extra nutrients that they have basically missed at breakfast.”

This work was supported by the National Dairy Association Mideast.

SARS-CoV-2 spreads mainly through respiratory droplets, and dental procedures are known to produce an abundance of aerosols – leading to fears that flying saliva during a cleaning or a restorative procedure could make the dentist’s chair a high-transmission location.

Ohio State University researchers set out to determine whether saliva is the main source of the spray, collecting samples from personnel, equipment and other surfaces reached by aerosols during a range of dental procedures.

By analyzing the genetic makeup of the organisms detected in those samples, the researchers determined that watery solution from irrigation tools, not saliva, was the main source of any bacteria or viruses present in the spatter and spurts from patients’ mouths.

Even when low levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were detected in the saliva of asymptomatic patients, the aerosols generated during their procedures showed no signs of the coronavirus. In essence, from a microbial standpoint, the contents of the spray mirrored what was in the office environment.

“Getting your teeth cleaned does not increase your risk for COVID-19 infection any more than drinking a glass of water from the dentist’s office does,” said lead author Purnima Kumar, professor of periodontology at Ohio State.

“These findings should help us open up our practices, make ourselves feel safe about our environment and, for patients, get their oral and dental problems treated – there is so much evidence emerging that if you have poor oral health, you are more susceptible to COVID,” Kumar said.

The study was published Wednesday, May 12, in the Journal of Dental Research.

Previous research has shown that dental-procedure aerosols tend to land on providers’ faces and the patient’s chest, and can travel as far as 11 feet. But the studies, catching the spray in petri dishes placed on people, equipment and around the room, found only that bacteria existed – they rarely identified the organisms and never determined where they came from. Saliva has been the presumptive source for a long time.

When saliva was considered potentially deadly at the start of the pandemic, Kumar decided a long-term answer was needed to settle the question of whether saliva is the source of dental aerosols.

For the study, the team enrolled 28 patients receiving dental implants and restorations using high-speed drills or ultrasonic scaling procedures in Ohio State’s College of Dentistry between May 4 and July 10, 2020. Researchers collected samples of saliva and irrigant (the water-based cleaning solutions used to flush out the mouth) before each procedure and, 30 minutes after the procedure, aerosol remnants – condensate – from providers’ face shields, the patient’s bib and an area 6 feet away from the chair.

Kumar and colleagues then put genome sequencing technology to use that wasn’t available in the petri-dish days. This allowed them to first characterize the microbial mix in pre-procedure saliva and irrigants, which they could then compare to organisms in the aerosol samples collected later.

With the analytical method they used, the researchers did not need to characterize the microbes – they instead looked for variations in sequences that provided enough information to identify the family of bacteria or viruses to which they belonged.

“Some species that live in your mouth can closely resemble those in water and the environment. Using this method, we don’t even have to know the names of these organisms – you can tell whether they are exactly genetically identical or genetically different,” Kumar said. “If you use this granular approach to see these very nuanced differences in the genetic code, you can very accurately identify where they’re coming from.”

No matter the procedure or where the condensate had landed, microbes from irrigants contributed to about 78% of the organisms in aerosols while saliva, if present, accounted for 0.1% to 1.2% of the microbes distributed around the room.

Salivary bacteria were detected in condensate from only eight cases and of those, five patients had not used a pre-procedural mouth rinse. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was identified in the saliva of 19 patients, but was undetectable in aerosols in any of the cases.

The findings are reassuring, but also make sense, Kumar said: Irrigant dilutes saliva – a “thick, viscous” substance – by an estimated 20- to 200-fold, and the research is validated by a 2020 study that reported a less than 1% COVID-19 positivity rate among dentists.

Kumar noted that dentistry has long been at the forefront of infection-control practices in health care. During the pandemic, new protocols have included strengthened ventilation systems, extra aerosol suction equipment, N95 masks and face shields on top of goggles, and extended downtime between patients. She is hopeful this study’s findings will make practitioners and patients feel at ease about being in the dentist’s office – with continued stringent protection in place.

“Dental surgeons and hygienists are always at the forefront of the war against bacteria in the mouth, and they of course did not feel safe because they are front-line workers surrounded by aerosol,” said Kumar, who has a periodontology practice of her own and was one of the procedure operators in the study.

“Hopefully this will set their mind at rest because when you do procedures, it is the water from the ultrasonic equipment that’s causing bacteria to be there. It’s not saliva. So the risk of spreading infection is not high,” she said. “However, we should not lose sight of the fact that this virus spreads through aerosol, and speaking, coughing or sneezing in the dental office can still carry a high risk of disease transmission.”

Co-authors of the study include Archana Meethil, Shwetha Saraswat and Shareef Dabdoub of Ohio State and Prem Prashant Chaudhary of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

New research identifies personality traits that have been associated with positive and negative experiences on psychedelics in previous studies, information that could help predict how future clinical trial participants will respond to the drugs.

The findings suggest that people more open to new experiences and willing to surrender to the unknown may be best positioned to have a positive experience on psychedelics, and individuals who tend to be preoccupied or apprehensive could be more likely to have a negative, or challenging, experience.

These predictions could be used by scientists to help hesitant clinical trial patients feel more open to the potential therapy, possibly by offering lower doses as a starting point, researchers say – though such a concept remains speculative.

“The findings point to interesting testable things we can look at in future research,” said Alan Davis, assistant professor of social work at The Ohio State University and senior author of the review. “It might be plausible to use threshold doses that are smaller than those used in a trial as a first exposure so people have less anxiety, experience the benefit and, from that, go into a higher dose later.”

The study is published online in the journal ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science.

To arrive at these predictions, the researchers reviewed 14 published clinical trials and other types of studies conducted in recent years that documented participants’ personality traits or states of mind and their associations with a positive or negative experience on psychedelics.

“It’s been an open question so far in psychedelic science: How can we predict how people will react? We thought this review would be a good opportunity to develop a narrative of what the consensus is so far,” said study first author Jacob Aday, a PhD candidate in psychology at Central Michigan University who collaborates with Davis.

Preliminary evidence has suggested that psychedelics may be effective in treating mood, anxiety, trauma-based and substance use disorders.

“Psychedelics might broadly apply to a whole range of different psychiatric problems, and in part that might be because they’re directly affecting neurotransmission and the brain’s ability to communicate in new ways that involve different parts of the brain,” Davis said. “But there is still a lot to unpack about exactly how this all works and why it may be effective.”

Of the studies reviewed, 10 tested psilocybin (commonly known as magic mushrooms) as a therapy, two involved LSD, one used a hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca and one examined psychedelic use in general.

Experiences on psychedelics vary in intensity and tend to comprise three categories: a mystical, insightful or challenging experience. A mystical experience can feel like a spiritual connection to the divine, an insightful experience increases people’s awareness and understanding about themselves, and a challenging experience relates to emotional and physical reactions such as anxiety or increased arousal.

The review suggests that people who are high in the traits of openness, acceptance and absorption – the tendency to immerse oneself into imaginative experiences – and in a psychological state of surrendering to whatever may transpire are more likely to have positive psychedelic experiences.

A state of surrender, in particular, stood out for its association with a lower chance for acute dread and a higher likelihood of a mystical experience and what is known as “ego dissolution,” when one’s sense of self gives way to a closer connection to other people and the broader world.

In contrast, people who are low in those traits or who are in preoccupied, apprehensive or confused states are considered more likely to experience adverse reactions.

“There was also tentative evidence that increased experience with psychedelics and increased age were associated with slightly less intense effects with the drugs,” Aday said. “And there weren’t any differences according to sex. Men and women responded similarly.”

Three studies had identified potential neurological markers that could help predict research participant reactions to psychedelics, but the cost of collecting brain scans to screen trial candidates made them less practical predictors than psychological traits, Aday said.

Davis has already considered potential reactions to psychedelics for a psilocybin trial he is planning for veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder.

“People who have experienced trauma are not very high in surrender, because they are anxious all the time about their past traumatic experiences,” he said. “A possibility to explore is starting with a low or moderate dose prior to giving the full therapeutic dose, which might help them increase in surrender. We’ve designed the study this way, thinking that might be helpful.”

Study co-authors include Cayla Mitzkovitz, Emily Bloesch and Christopher Davoli of Central Michigan University.

The vaccination program was a trial run before the home of the basketball Buckeyes turns into a mass COVID-19 vaccination site for patients and the public. The vaccination program at the Schottenstein Center begins next week (Jan. 19) and will eventually have the capacity to provide more than 3,000 vaccines per day.

“The Schottenstein Center offers us a lot of advantages over our other campus locations, so in particular, as we think about moving to the general public and particularly the elderly public, certainly we have ADA accessible facilities here. We have ample parking that’s very close to the site,” said Crystal Tubbs, associate director in the Department of Pharmacy at the medical center. “We will have shuttles running in the parking lot so patients can be picked up and brought to the entrances. We also have an adequate fleet of wheelchairs to help people once they’re inside the Schott to be mobile. And then we really have just a great complement of staff here on site.”

Tubbs said the streamlined process accommodates both efficiency and patient safety. Patients go through a brief check-in and registration process. After they are seated, they have a conversation with a vaccinator to make sure that it’s safe to administer the injection.

After patients receive their shot, they are asked to wait 15 to 30 minutes, depending on their history of allergies. While they are waiting, they schedule the timing of the second vaccine dose.

“Then once that 15 or 30 minutes has passed, the patients are free to go,” Tubbs said.

For Erin Tossey, a behavioral support specialist with the university’s Nisonger Center, the vaccination was simple and straightforward.

“I was excited. Our supervisor e-mailed us to let us know that we were going to start the process of getting vaccinated,” she said. “I know myself and all my co-workers are just looking forward to being able to get back out and see our clients.”

When the Schottenstein Center vaccination site opens next week, prioritization of who receives the vaccine and when remains guided by federal and state governments. The medical center is scheduling vaccine appointments for individuals who are at least 80 years old following Gov. Mike DeWine’s plans for vaccine distribution. Appointment scheduling opportunities will follow the COVID-19 vaccination phase 1B distribution plan as follows: 

• Week of Jan. 19: 80 years of age and older
• Week of Jan. 25: 75 and older and those with severe congenital or developmental disorders
• Week of Feb. 1: 70 and older and employees of K-12 schools who wish to remain on or return to in-person or hybrid models 
• Week of Feb. 8: 65 and older

The medical center also plans to provide COVID-19 vaccinations for patients at an existing vaccine location within OSU East Hospital beginning in February.

More information and updates are available on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

“It’s certainly a really exciting opportunity to be in this beautiful space,” Tubbs said. “I think you’ll see and feel the Buckeye spirit. The team that has brought this to fruition is a really incredible, dedicated and gritty team. We’re really looking forward to offering this to our patients and the general public.”

Ohio State University researchers reviewed 49 vaccine studies in humans dating back 30 years that document how stress, depression and poor health behaviors can negatively affect the body’s immune response to vaccination, and how improving health factors can enhance that response.

The impaired immune responses tended to fall into three categories – interference with the development of antibodies against the pathogen, more rapid erosion of antibody protection that does develop, or intensification of vaccination’s side effects.

The steady stress of navigating our disrupted routines and social lives during the pandemic may have set us back when it comes to maintaining healthy behaviors, the researchers say. They report on recent data from across the world documenting higher depressive and anxiety symptoms and more insomnia during lockdown, increased alcohol sales and overeating, and fewer average step counts recorded by Fitbits.

There is good news: The power to make improvements that give us the best chance for a healthy response to the coronavirus vaccine is almost completely in our control. Managing stress through exercise and mindfulness meditation, getting enough sleep, quitting or curbing tobacco use and improving our diets – even in the short term, right around the time of vaccination – could influence how our bodies respond, the evidence suggests. And for those struggling with depression, now would be a good time to seek professional help.

“When we think of vaccine efficacy, we often think of the vaccine itself. My motivation was to draw attention to the fact that we bring important factors to the table as well – and those factors are modifiable,” said Annelise Madison, first author of the paper and a graduate student in clinical psychology at Ohio State.

“If we can address them now, when most of the world has yet to receive the vaccine, we have the chance to make our response to the vaccine quicker, more robust and lasting.”

A number of the studies reviewed were led by senior author Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research and a professor of psychiatry and psychology in the College of Medicine. Kiecolt-Glaser and her late husband, immunologist Ronald Glaser, were pioneers in mind-body research that showed how stress impairs physical health in a variety of ways, primarily by hampering the human immune response.

The review is accepted for publication in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

The studies in this review investigated the effects of psychological factors and behaviors on the immune response to a range of vaccine types, such as influenza, hepatitis B, typhoid and pneumonia. Because many findings have been consistent across responses to different vaccines, the team considered them likely to be relevant to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Kiecolt-Glaser pointed to a few of her past studies that illustrate the varying effects of different types of stress on human responses to vaccination.

In a study of medical students’ immune response to a highly effective hepatitis B vaccine, all students eventually developed antibodies – but the students who were more stressed or anxious about exams coinciding with the inoculations took significantly longer to develop protective antibodies.

Research on older adults’ response to a pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine showed that though all study participants initially developed antibodies quickly, the antibody response diminished over the next three to six months in those who were chronically stressed caregivers looking after spouses with dementia.

“These findings suggest that with the COVID-19 vaccine, when people are more stressed and more anxious, it may take a little longer to develop antibodies, so they should probably allow a little more time before they assume they’re protected,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. “Another possibility is that stress may erode protection more rapidly.”

Her lab’s past research has also shown that older adults – who are considered at higher risk for severe COVID-19 symptoms – sometimes don’t respond well to flu vaccines. In one study, only 20% of stressed adults who were age 71 or older developed antibodies after a flu shot.

Additional studies in her lab showed that people who were depressed experienced post-vaccination side effects of lethargy, malaise and irritability for a longer period of time than people who were not depressed.

Side effects are normal – the vaccination is training the immune system to recognize a pathogen by initiating an inflammatory response that can make us feel sick – but they can cause some people to avoid vaccines.

“Side effects are from an inflammatory response to the vaccine, which is a good thing,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. “You want to see a strong response to the vaccine. That’s one reason we know the vaccine is effective. On the other hand, the absence of a response doesn’t mean it’s not effective.”

According to previous research, a range of interventions may help us all get the most out of the COVID-19 vaccine: Massage and expressive writing for stress management, short- and long-term physical activity including 25 minutes of arm exercises before injection, and nutritional supplementation all helped increase antibody response or reduce side effects in past studies.

“And when you know you’re going to get the vaccine the next day, try to get a good night’s sleep. Just one night, and going in fully rested, can be helpful,” Kiecolt-Glaser said.

Though we may be suffering from health-advice fatigue 10 months after the first lockdown, Madison said now may be the most important time to heed the experts’ recommendations.

“I know it can be difficult day in and day out during the pandemic to keep prioritizing things we know we should do,” she said. “But we could use this time as a wake-up call. These are important health behaviors to keep engaging in, especially as we’re preparing to get vaccinated – which is a really good thing.”

Research reviewed in the paper was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Additional co-authors were Rosie Shrout and Megan Renna of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.

In the study, participants described to the researchers a real-life incident that made them angry.

When researchers didn’t show support or understanding for the anger participants were describing, the story-tellers showed declines in positive emotions. But when the researchers validated what the participants were saying, their positive emotions were protected and stayed the same.

Similarly, study participants reported dips in their overall mood as they recalled the anger-provoking event, and only those who were validated reported a recovery of mood back to their starting point.

There was no significant difference found in participants’ negative emotions – a result that speaks to the value of focusing on protecting positivity, said Jennifer Cheavens, senior author of the study and a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

“We have underestimated the power of positive emotions. We spend so much time thinking about how to remedy negative emotions, but we don’t spend much time thinking about helping people harness and nurture positive emotions,” Cheavens said.

“It’s really important to help people with their depression, anxiety and fear, but it’s also important to help people tap into curiosity, love, flexibility and optimism. People can feel sad and overwhelmed, and also hopeful and curious, in the same general time frame.”

The study is published online in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In three experiments, the researchers assessed the effects of validation and invalidation on what are known clinically as positive and negative affect. Positive affect refers to positive emotions and expression that Cheavens said allow us to be curious, connected and flexible in our thinking. Negative affect, on the other hand, refers to negative emotions and expression ranging from disgust to fear to sadness.

A total of 307 undergraduate students participated in the experiments. The students completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative affect at the beginning and end of the study and overall mood at several time points during the experiments.

Researchers asked participants to think and write for five minutes about a time when they felt intense anger, and then verbally describe those experiences to a researcher. Based on randomized assignments, the experimenter either validated or invalidated their angry feelings.

The participants’ experiences with anger covered a wide range: roommate troubles, unfaithful romantic partners, being the victim of a theft or getting mad at their parents.

Experimenters listening to their stories used flexible scripts to respond. Validating comments included such phrases as “Of course you’d be angry about that” or “I hear what you’re saying and I understand you feel angry.”

Invalidating responses ranged from “That doesn’t sound like anger” to “Why would that make you so angry?”

Results showed that all participants had a decrease in positive affect while they were thinking and writing about being angry. However, when they started describing the situation to experimenters, the validated participants’ positive affect matched or even exceeded their baseline measures. The positive affect scores for those who were invalidated did not recover while talking with the experimenters.

Based on five measures of mood in two of the three studies, participants’ mood consistently darkened as they considered what made them angry. Validated participants’ moods were restored to normal, but the invalidated students’ moods generally continued to get worse.

The research team conducted the studies with plans to apply the results in a therapy setting. But the findings are relevant for relationships as well, Cheavens said.

“When you process negative emotions, that negative affect gets turned on. But if someone validates you, it keeps your positive affect buffered. Validation protects people’s affect so they can stay curious in interpersonal interactions and in therapy,” she said.

“Adding validation into therapy helps people feel understood, and when we feel understood we can receive feedback on how we also might change. But it’s not a uniquely clinical thing – often the same ways you make therapy better are ways you make parenting, friendships and romantic relationships better.”

The study was co-authored by Ohio State psychology graduate students Cinthia Benitez (now a clinical psychologist in Seattle) and Kristen Howard.

“In normal times, a little bit of stress can help us find solutions and be productive. But when it’s prolonged for months on end and that stress becomes chronic, our bodies never get the message that the stress response can calm down, which can be detrimental to our physical and mental health,” said Sophie Lazarus, a clinical psychologist in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State.

This never-ending stress has many causes, stemming from all the adjustments people have made throughout the pandemic, such as helping their children navigate virtual and in-person learning, working from home, keeping their family safe and healthy or coping with economic hardships.

When it comes to making New Year’s resolutions, rather than a sweeping change that requires major adjustments to your life, Lazarus recommends making small shifts to bring greater ease into your daily life or see the positive that’s already there. One of the best ways to find these opportunities is to practice mindfulness.

Whether it’s meditation or simply bringing more awareness to nourishing activities you’re already doing, mindfulness can help you stay in the present moment, letting concerns about the past and future be held more lightly. There are plenty of apps and online resources to introduce you to different types of mindful activities. Lazarus suggests finding what works for you and practicing a few minutes every day to slow down and keep everything in perspective.

“Mindfulness is really stepping out of autopilot and being aware of what's happening in the present moment. When we do that, we really have a better sense of how what we do impacts us,” Lazarus said. “Identifying sources of stress and making small, incremental changes to boost our happiness is going to be a lot more helpful than setting a really high bar, not meeting that bar and feeling discouraged.”

Lazarus suggests these three tips to clear your head and move forward with a more positive outlook in 2021:

• Shift your perspective – It’s easy to get caught up in what’s wrong in our lives and miss what’s positive or going well. First thing every morning, reflect on three things you’re grateful for. It can be anything — friends and family, work, health, pets, a sunny day, anything that brings you comfort or happiness. Starting your day by reminding yourself of the good things in your life can help you keep a more balanced outlook in the face of the day’s challenges.
• Unplug – Schedule some time to reconnect with the world around you. Taking some time away from screens can help you let go of stressors that are often not in your control and put the focus back on yourself. Mindless scrolling on social media can actually increase stress and anxiety. Put the phone and computer aside and take a walk, cook a meal or ask your family about their day.
• Be kind to yourself – It’s hard to not be in control and, as our routines are disrupted, it’s easy to be overly critical of ourselves. This harsh stance only increases stress and makes things worse. See if you can be a little gentler with yourself, as you might be with a beloved friend or family member. This might sound awkward, but it will ultimately make you more productive and able to tackle what’s in front of you. Pause to take a deep breath, a bubble bath, a nap, whatever you need that day to help you remember that you’re important, too. Just take care of yourself.

Lazarus says if you find that you’re having trouble taking care of yourself, performing at work or getting along with others, you should seek help from a mental health professional.

Ohio State’s Comprehensive Monitoring Team (CMT) today (Oct. 22, 2020) issued its initial report on ongoing data analysis designed to stem the spread of infection on and around the Columbus and regional campuses. The team of 16 began meeting in August to assess patterns, trends and emerging concerns related to the pandemic. It includes experts in various fields including infectious disease, public health, mathematics and engineering.

Among the CMT’s observations:

• The strategy of frequent testing, isolation, quarantine, masking, distancing and limits on class and gathering size – against the backdrop of less density on campus overall – has been successful in reducing infection rates for undergraduate students living on and off campus. Among graduate and professional students in the testing program, rates have been low.
• Two key measures – trends in infection rates among asymptomatic students and positive rates among students who seek out testing because of symptoms or close contact with someone who is infected – declined and then remained stable since mid-September.
• The reproduction number (R_t), an epidemiological measure of the potential for ongoing transmission, has remained stable, and primarily below 1, an indicator that the epidemic may be slowing.
• The majority of students who have tested positive for COVID-19 have experienced no symptoms.

“It is possible to drive infection down with an infusion of determined university leadership, resources, and effort through close monitoring and focused intervention,” the CMT concludes in the report.

That optimism comes with a side of caution – particularly as the weather turns colder, sending more people indoors, and as some grow complacent about the public health precautions necessary to contain the pandemic, said Amy Fairchild, who leads the CMT and is dean of Ohio State’s College of Public Health.

She stressed the importance of engaged students, faculty and staff who have committed to safety measures – and of redoubling efforts to keep Ohio State going in the right direction.

“Our students have been routinely showing up for testing, participating in the contact tracing process and protecting the Buckeye community through isolation and quarantine – all factors that have contributed to the relative success we’ve seen so far,” Fairchild said.

“Coupled with ongoing measures including proper masking, physical distancing and avoiding crowded gatherings – which are all supported by our public health campaign – I’m optimistic that we can continue to control transmission on and off campus, even as increases in infection rates are being seen in communities throughout the state.”

Looking forward, the CMT is expanding its work monitoring vulnerable populations and activity on Ohio State’s regional campuses and analyzing wastewater, a method of tracking the virus that bolsters overall campus surveillance.

In addition to its near-daily meetings to analyze data, create predictive models and develop recommendations for campus leaders, the monitoring team reviews policies for Ohio State’s Case Investigation and Contact Tracing Team. Members of the CMT also support the Ohio Department of Health’s monitoring efforts.

Along with the expertise of its core members, the team draws on a breadth of skills and knowledge from faculty, students and staff throughout Ohio State.

“This year, the flu and COVID-19 will be circulating at the same time, increasing the risk of being exposed to both viruses. The combination of the two viruses could be life-threatening.

“This is why it is important — now more than ever — to get your flu shot to help keep you and your family, friends and peers healthy and safe,” according to a university-wide email sent today (Oct. 7) by Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron; Executive Vice President, Chancellor for Health Affairs and Wexner Medical Center CEO Harold Paz; Senior Vice President for Talent, Culture and Human Resources Susan Basso; and Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers.

This recommendation applies to all members of the community, whether they are living, learning and working on a campus or at home. Employees at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, some health sciences colleges and Student Health Services should follow existing enhanced compliance requirements.

“The flu season this year brings a new challenge to the COVID-19 pandemic: the need to prevent hospitalizations by reducing flu severity,” said Amy Fairchild, dean of the College of Public Health and chair of the Safe Campus and Scientific Advisory subgroup of the COVID-19 Transition Task Force.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends annual flu shots for anyone older than 6 months and for high-risk individuals and health care professionals.

“As a reminder, we adhere to safety precautions to protect not only ourselves, but also our family, friends and colleagues,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer for the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “With flu viruses and COVID-19 circulating at the same time during the flu season, it’s especially important to get a flu shot to reduce your risk from the flu and reduce the burden on our health care system during the pandemic.”

Some symptoms of the flu and COVID-19 are similar, and both viruses spread from person to person, Thomas said, so flu cases could be mistaken for COVID-19 and drive up the need for coronavirus testing. A significant increase in the demand for tests has potential to put stress on COVID-19 testing capacity.

“We are fortunate that something as simple as a flu shot can help prevent people from getting sick, infecting others and avoid putting a strain on the health care system. Taking this step promotes the health of the entire community,” Fairchild said.

According to the CDC, the flu shot can reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60%, lessen the severity of symptoms in people who do get infected, and stop the spread of flu to others.

The university also encourages faculty and staff to take a 10-minute BuckeyeLearn online training course that explains the importance of flu prevention and how to stop the spread.

Details about where to get a flu shot are available on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website. 

Ohio State’s dashboard has received the only “A+” grade from the panel of experts, who rate dashboards on a variety of criteria that include frequency of updates, what data are reported and whether they’re easy to read. As of Oct. 1, the panel had published ratings of 211 dashboards.

“Their mission behind this whole effort is to encourage colleges and universities to be as transparent as possible with their COVID-19 strategies, including the community impact,” said Eric Mayberry, senior manager of data analytics in Ohio State’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and a co-creator of Ohio State’s dashboard.

The dashboard contains key measures for the state of Ohio – daily cases (also available by county) and hospital capacity among them – and student test result data for Ohio State presented in three formats: single day, seven-day average and cumulative, plus cumulative results of employee tests. The university also reports information about isolation and quarantine bed usage, capacity and availability, and indicators of where things stand with personal protective equipment and enhanced cleaning – key mitigation strategies for the pandemic.

At this point in the semester, the trend line of student testing data on the dashboard clearly shows Ohio State has bent its curve in the proper direction: down. Based on the latest data available today, Oct. 2, the seven-day average of positive student test results stands at 0.7% for students living on campus and 1.6% for off-campus students. The trends represent a steady decline in the seven-day average positivity rate over the month of September.

In addition, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that Ohio State Wexner Medical Center’s pandemic protocols – masking, hand hygiene, physical distancing, and testing of symptomatic patients and staff – were effective at protecting health care providers from contracting the virus. Fewer than 1% of Ohio State providers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in a multicenter study.

Understanding dashboard data

Leanne Stanley, a consulting research statistician in the Office of Institutional Research and Planning, created the dashboard with Mayberry and Henry Zheng, associate vice president for strategic analytics. They collaborated with a team of Ohio State public health, technology and analytics experts, with guidance from university leaders who strongly supported data-informed decision-making and data transparency, Zheng said.

“Many universities have public dashboards, and there are lots of reasons to do it, but probably the first and foremost is to be transparent, trying to be able to show the public where we stand in terms of the epidemic on campus and our response,” said William Miller, professor of epidemiology and senior associate dean of research in Ohio State’s College of Public Health, who helped lead development of the dashboard.

The seven-day average of positive student test results provides the most useful measurement of cases on and off campus, Miller said.

“It’s a rolling average so that today is a seven-day average for the seven days prior to that. It incorporates both the single-day information and … to give you a better indication of where we’re really at, smooths out the variability that you might have,” said Miller, also a member of the Safe Campus and Scientific Advisory Subgroup of the COVID-19 Transition Task Force.

Cumulative data – for students and university employees – is depicted in circle graphs on the dashboard. Since surveillance testing began on Aug. 14, Ohio State has conducted more than 100,000 tests of students and almost 2,400 tests of employees.

“This gives an overall sense of where things are, and the single-day result is an indicator just day by day of the number of tests that have been performed and the positivity rate for that given day,” Miller said. “And that will vary a lot over the course of a week, in part because we have many fewer tests on the weekend. And when you have fewer tests, you have much more variability, potentially, in the test results.”

Miller cautioned against making broad assumptions about any individual statistic. For example, though the daily surveillance testing is an ongoing program, there are other reasons for students to be tested: when they feel sick, if they’ve been identified through contact tracing as likely being exposed to the virus, or when a cluster of positive cases calls for targeted testing of the students living in the affected environment. As for the surveillance itself: All students at all ranks who live on campus are tested weekly, and a random sample of all undergraduate students living off campus is taken each week, which averages to about once per month for individual students.

“Mitigation and surveillance testing is trying to keep the epidemic under control and also give us a very clear look into it,” Miller said. “When we do targeted testing, your positivity rate may be higher than just when you’re testing everyone.

“So when you look from one day to the next, the thing that’s difficult to interpret a little bit is if there was a change in the testing procedures – so you can sometimes have a bump in the positivity rate because we did a whole bunch of testing related to a small cluster of cases and we found several more cases,” he said. “That’s one reason to be careful, especially when you look at the single-day rates. I think that’s really the biggest thing to be cautious of when you’re interpreting the tests of students – the reason for testing doesn’t come through in the number.”

There is a measure for the state of Ohio included on the dashboard that eventually will be added for the university, as well: the R(t), or reproduction number. Essentially, this is a gauge of whether the epidemic is expanding or contracting based on the estimate of how many other people each person who tests positive for COVID-19 infects. It takes some time to arrive at a meaningful figure because the number of positive cases over a period of time is fed into an algorithm to produce the estimate of whether the R(t) is below 1, at 1 or above 1.

“Anything above 1 is concerning,” Miller said. “If the R(t) is greater than 1, that means that the epidemic will be expanding because one person is infecting more than one other person, on average. If the R(t) is at 1, it’s basically under control, but not shrinking. And if the R(t) is less than 1, then it is going to be contracting as long as something doesn’t change to perturb it.”

Norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, sickens an estimated 48 million people in the United States every year and causes about 3,000 deaths. It’s transmitted from person to person and through consumption of contaminated water and food.

Lots of things we consume contain what are known in the industry as edible films: They can enhance appearance, like wax that makes apples shiny; hold contents together, like plastic drug capsules; and prevent contents from seeping together by, for example, being placed between a prepared pie crust and the filling.

“In many cases, an edible film is in a product, but you are not aware of it,” said Melvin Pascall, professor of food science and technology at The Ohio State University and senior study author. “We don’t have to put that on the label since the material is edible. That’s another way in which we use packaging – and the consumer doesn’t have to know.”

Some edible films are also enriched with antimicrobial agents that can kill or slow the growth of organisms that cause illness, such as E. coli and mold.

In this new study led by Pascall, adding green tea extract to a film-forming substance created a safe-to-eat barrier that killed norovirus as well as two types of bacteria.

While most antimicrobial packaging advances to date have emphasized fighting bacteria, this finding holds promise for a newer area of research into the concept of using edible film to kill a virus, Pascall said.

“Norovirus is a tough virus to work with – it is a non-enveloped virus, which is the type more resistant to sanitizers and antimicrobial agents,” he said. “However, because it has public health concerns and has been implicated in a number of foodborne outbreaks, we wanted to look at the effects of green tea extract on norovirus.”

The study is published in the International Journal of Food Science.

Pascall and his team created the films with a base substance called chitosan, a sugar found in the exoskeleton of shellfish. Chitosan is marketed as a weight-loss supplement and used in agricultural and medicinal applications, and has been studied extensively as a safe and readily available compound for edible film development.

Previous studies have suggested that chitosan has antimicrobial properties. But norovirus might exceed its bug-fighting abilities: In this study, the researchers found that chitosan by itself did not kill the virus.

To test the effects of green tea extract, the researchers dissolved it alone in water and added it to a chitosan-based liquid solution and dried film. Several different concentrations of the extract showed effectiveness against norovirus cells, with the highest level tested in this study killing them all in a day.

“We had tested the chitosan by itself and it didn’t show much antimicrobial activity against the virus,” Pascall said. “But when we added the green tea extract to chitosan, we saw that the film had antiviral properties – so we concluded the antiviral properties were coming from the green tea extract.”

The scientists introduced at least 1 million virus cells to the solution and dried films. Those containing green tea extract lowered the presence of virus cells within three hours. The films with the highest concentration of green tea extract reduced norovirus to undetectable levels by 24 hours after the exposure.

Though norovirus was the focus of this work, the researchers also found that green tea extract lowered E. coli K12 and listeria innocua, surrogates for bacteria that also cause foodborne illness, to undetectable levels within 24 hours.

This study didn’t identify how the killing happens – typically an antimicrobial agent disables organisms in ways that cause them to die or render them unable to reproduce. The researchers used mouse norovirus cells because human norovirus cells don’t grow well in a lab setting.

There is still a lot of work to do before green tea extract-infused films are ready to enter the market. A tricky part of adding natural substances to edible packaging is ensuring that enough is used to deliver the microbe-killing effect without changing the taste or smell of the food.

“A higher concentration of a natural antimicrobial might cause a large drop in the target organism, but at the same time it defeats the purpose of the food by adding an objectionable taste or odor,” Pascall said. “There is also the impact of the natural compound on the material itself – it may cause the film to become too brittle or sticky. These are things food scientists have to consider when using antimicrobial agents, especially those from natural sources.”

It’s also too soon to tell which kinds of food would be the best candidates for antiviral edible films made with green tea extract. It depends on whether the food would be exposed to heat, moisture or acidic conditions, for example. There is also a chance another natural substance could do an even better job – Pascall is conducting similar studies with other extracts.

Co-authors Collins Amankwaah and Jaesung Lee of the Department of Food Science and Technology and Jianrong Li of the Department of Veterinary Biosciences, all at Ohio State, also worked on the study.

Miller’s memorable motto, “Time, space, people, place,” can help people remember how to stay safe and physically distant amid COVID-19. The rhyme has been featured several places, including on NPR and in The Washington Post.

“Is it wrong to wish this could get turned into a song?” infectious disease epidemiologist Robert Orellana, a two-time alum of the College of Public Health, commented on Twitter in June.
 

Rayo, also a professor of health and rehabilitation sciences at the College of Medicine, saw the comment and immediately had a burst of creative inspiration.

“I heard the melody right away, starting plunking down verses and ended up writing it in an afternoon,” said Rayo, who before his MS and PhD earned dual bachelor’s degrees in music performance and chemical engineering. He primarily plays trumpet, but also sings and dabbles in guitar, ukulele, piano and drums. He’s also put his musical ear into his engineering work, leading efforts to improve and streamline auditory cues of medical alarms in hospitals.

Rayo’s longtime friend, former bandmate and local music producer Bill Patterson of Wet Sounds Music, produced “Time Space People Place” – a song the pair described as a mix between Bob Marley and Jason Mraz — “a combination of energy and playfulness.”

“I read Bill Miller’s tweet about his rhyme and I felt compelled to write the song, because there is still a lot of confusion in our state and in the country about what we need to do to stay safe in the pandemic,” Rayo said. “We all want to get back a semblance of normal, and these four words (and a mask!) can really help.”

Developed by Bernadette Melnyk, university chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing and the Buckeye Wellness team, the sessions are designed to equip children with easily digestible but important knowledge and skills to sustain well-being during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The webinars are free and open to the public at go.osu.edu/adolescentstaywell. 

Melnyk says it’s important to teach resiliency, coping strategies and healthy behavior habits as early as possible.

“We want to provide early teens with evidence-based cognitive-behavioral, coping and resiliency skills as well as to help them develop healthy lifestyle habits, including physical activity, healthy eating and needed sleep,” Melnyk said. “Mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, are on the rise in our adolescents in addition to overweight/obesity. The earlier we can teach children these skills, the better chance we have at preventing these problems.”

Because peer-to-peer counseling works well with young adolescents, students from the colleges of Nursing and Education and Human Ecology will facilitate the webinars and answer questions. Taylor Schwein, a fourth-year honors student majoring in nursing at Ohio State, is one of the instructors.

“I hope that the teens and families watching this webinar know that it is okay to feel anxious, stressed or depressed during these very trying times in our world,” Schwein said. “All of those feelings are very normal and no one is alone in feeling that way. It’s so important to recognize those feelings and continue to work on your mental health when things get hard.”

Each week, the webinar will cover a new topic.

• Week one – Stress Buster: Using Cognitive-Behavioral Skills to Allay Anxiety and Depression
• Week two – Staying Physically Active While Home: Tips and Tricks
• Week three – Be Here Now: Mindfulness Works!
• Week four – Sleep Soundly During the COVID-19 Pandemic: You Can Do It!
• Week five – Eating Healthy and Balanced in Stressful Times: Why it Matters
• Week six – Resiliency, Gratitude and Positivity: A Timely Trio in the Midst of the COVID-19 Storm

Each webinar will be conducted via Zoom. Polling will be used to measure stress and anxiety each week to look for trends. Each session is 30 minutes, with approximately 25 minutes spent on presentations with a few minutes for Q&A at the end. 

The webinar is based on a series of resources developed by Melnyk and other university wellness leaders for the Ohio State community titled “Staying calm and well in the midst of the COVID-19 storm. Evidence-based Tactics that Work!” That series, presented in April, had 4,500 registrants with an average live attendance of 1,300. More than 85% of participants found the series moderately or very helpful, and over 95% reported that they’ve put the skills taught in the series into practice. Recordings of the eight-week online webinars are posted here.

Melnyk also encourages parents to watch the webinars with their children so they can reinforce the concepts and skills being taught at home.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, derailing his plans and his chance to receive the associated course credit required to complete his degree.

As Gill (right) and other students across the state and nation searched for alternatives to their summer practicums, internships and clinical experiences, health departments were experiencing the unprecedented challenge of tracing the spread of COVID-19. For Gill, this struggle blossomed into a unique opportunity to assist with contact tracing in Ohio.

Contact tracing — identifying the web of people who may have come into contact with an infected individual and advising them to self-quarantine — is a task that typically falls on local and state health departments. The decades-old practice tends to be manageable for diseases like measles, tuberculosis and HIV. But with the scale at which COVID-19 was spreading, plus a lack of resources including testing equipment, it wasn’t clear how it was going to work for the pandemic.

“It was recognized pretty early on that the state and local health departments were going to need assistance with contact tracing,” said Bill Miller, senior associate dean of research and professor of epidemiology at the College of Public Health.

Despite talks of contact-tracing apps, traditional calls and texts are still the most reliable and trusted form of monitoring infectious disease spread, he said.

When the state began searching for more contact tracers, college students like Gill were among the first to know. In May, Columbus Public Health hired him as a COVID-19 contact tracer.

In addition to students like Gill who are paid, dozens of Ohio State students and faculty members are part of the Ohio Department of Health’s volunteer pool called the Public Health Assist Team, which local health departments can tap into for COVID-related needs. They come from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Medicine and Public Health, among others.

Similar to his original summer project, Gill’s new role allows him to provide a critical public service while he acquires necessary academic experience. His days begin when he receives a list of names and phone numbers to contact that day — sometimes up to 20. His responsibilities are to alert each person of their possible exposure without revealing the identity of the infected individual, inquire about COVID-19 symptoms and health care access, confirm basic demographic information and provide follow-up resources about the virus and benefits of quarantining.

“People are a little apprehensive at first. It takes a lot of social skills to feel out the situation and speak to each person individually in a different way that you think would make them feel comfortable,” Gill said, adding that his involvement in diversity and inclusion organizations around campus has equipped him to comfortably address people of various backgrounds.

“This is a hard job in that you have to be prepared to repeatedly talk to people who are very stressed and very scared,” Miller said. “You have to be comfortable helping those people stay calm and explaining the complex disease quickly and simply.”

In March, an initial call for contact tracing volunteers yielded around 1,200 applications, including more than 900 students from 27 academic institutions, said Joanne Pearsol, deputy director of the Ohio Department of Health. While the newly funded contact tracing workforce has offset some of the need for volunteers, some have been deployed and may be again if surges become overwhelming, said Pearsol, a former staff member at the College of Public Health.

“I grossly underestimated the interest in volunteering, so it was extremely heartening to see that response,” she said. “Not only was it students looking for credit for their coursework, it was other students who were home for the summer. It was professionals who were retired or not working and wanting to contribute in some way.”

Beyond the calls and text messages required to monitor the spread of COVID-19, contact tracing also involves data — a lot of it, said Kara Galvan, a second-year Master of Public Health Student who’s working for Columbus Public Health as a data entry specialist.

The work “becomes a little tedious, but it is really for the health of our community,” said Galvan, who plans to get a PhD in epidemiology after her master’s. “Even though my interest lies more with chronic disease, this is still an incredible opportunity.”

Both Galvan and Gill need 180 hours to complete their practicums, but both said they plan to work the full 480 hours at which their temporary positions are capped.

“The contact tracing workforce is an increasingly important public health response as the governor and others are committed to reopening,” said Teresa Long, special advisor for community engagement and partnership at the College of Public Health.

And it hasn’t been an easy task to get up and running. With a planned 1,000-plus new contact tracers in Ohio, it’s been all-hands-on-deck to set up employee resources and training, said Austin Oslock, a student at the College of Medicine and Spring 2020 alum of the College of Public Health who was hired to coordinate the state’s contact tracing training efforts in March.

In his role, Oslock has helped shape an eight-hour training course required before state contact tracers can get to work.

“A big part of it is comfort and familiarity with interviews. A lot of our contact tracers come from the medical and public health fields, and many can speak another language,” he said. “Whether you’re telling someone that they have coronavirus or that they may have been exposed to it — those are tough conversations.”

For the students involved, Long said this experience will be foundational and likely set a framework for what students will want to learn more about and how they will be active and thoughtful into their futures.

“There are so many fundamental lessons to be learned about the science, about fairness and justice, about who’s at risk and who’s vulnerable and about how to collectively support everyone.”

Drake revealed this strategy and shared insights about leading the university through the pandemic during a webinar presented last month by the Leadership Initiative at Fisher College of Business.

Drake has been a leader in higher education for nearly four decades, serving as chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, for nine years prior to his summer 2014 arrival at Ohio State. He is chair of the NCAA Board of Governors and past chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of Academic Health Centers and the Association of American Universities.

Below are excerpts from Drake’s conversation with Timothy Judge, executive director of the Leadership Initiative, and his responses to questions submitted by viewers of the webinar titled “Leading in Unprecedented Times with Ohio State President Michael V. Drake.”

As the nation watched the COVID-19 pandemic sweep out of China and unfold around the world over the winter, and then to the west coast, Drake said he knew it was time to act in early March.

“It became clear to me this was a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if.’ And the steps that we were going to need to take would be moving classes to online, and ultimately moving students off campus, and finally we needed to restrict staff from coming to work. My view was we could close the barn door after the horse had gotten out or before, and I thought it was a better thing to do that before.

“We had a meeting on Sunday, March 8. I pulled together a cabinet meeting, heard what everyone was thinking and then I did some thinking and talking with colleagues overnight and then called a meeting on Monday morning. By noon Monday we knew it was clear what we had to do, and, what does it even mean – we’re going to go to online?

“I was feeling we were in a race and every day made a real difference. I knew we were out front. ... A couple of places had done this before but they had cases on campus and we were trying to do this prior to having a case on campus or in our community. And the concept is we had to do this as quickly as we could.”

Ohio State stayed ahead of the curve, moving against the pandemic long before any other Big Ten schools reacted. In his role as chair of the NCAA Board of Governors, he said there also was little doubt the pandemic would affect basketball tournaments.

“This was tournament week for the Big Ten and March Madness was about to start. March Madness for the NCAA is like ‘The Nutcracker’ for ballet companies. That’s where the funding comes from for your organization for the year. It’s unthinkable not to have the tournament.

“In my conversations with the president of the NCAA and select board members, and then the board, we made the decision first on Wednesday, March 11, that we’d limit this to only coaches and teams, play with no spectators – and we were thinking about that overnight. Then we thought, actually, is that going to be enough? And the answer was no. We have to do the unthinkable, which was cancel the tournament.

“We could see what was going to happen and the answer was, what can we do to make sure we’ve done all we can to mitigate it.”

Were these the right decisions? Drake says leaders routinely have to make difficult decisions without all the information.

“I will say that … given the stakes, my goal was to overreact slightly rather than under-react at all. From the time we made the decision, it’s been forward. We haven’t looked back.”

Drake said the university is expecting students back in the fall, with modifications.

“I believe that the most important message for our students to incorporate in the fall is that their individual behavior affects the ability of the university to continue with business ‘as close to usual.’ If we have students living in our residence halls, their behavior might impact how the virus spreads, but more than that, their behaviors affect whether we can have students in the residence halls. If they behave in a way that allows this virus to gain a foothold and spread, then we can’t have students in the residence halls and this whole thing has to stop.”

The full web interview is online at https://www.facebook.com/FisherLeads/videos/927033194386620/

The collection of oral bacteria in daily e-cigarette users’ mouths is teeming with potent infection-causing organisms that put vapers at substantial risk for ailments ranging from gum disease to cancer, researchers found.

Though they didn’t have active disease, participants’ oral bacteria composition resembled that of people with periodontitis, a gum infection that can lead to tooth loss and, left untreated, is a risk factor for heart and lung disease.

The damaging effects were seen with or without nicotine, leading the scientists to believe that the heated and pressurized liquids in e-cigarette cartridges are likely the key culprit in transforming vapers’ mouths into a welcoming home for a dangerous combination of microbes.

“Vaping is such a big assault on the oral environment, and the change happens dramatically and over a short period of time,” said Purnima Kumar, professor of periodontology at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study.

Even longtime current and former cigarette smokers in the study, whose tobacco habit would have given disease-causing microbes easier access to the mouth, had the more damaging oral profiles linked to vaping after only three to 12 months of e-cigarette use. Kumar said this finding calls into question claims that vaping reduces the harm caused by smoking.

“If you stop smoking and start vaping instead, you don’t move back toward a healthy bacterial profile but shift up to the vaping profile,” she said. “Knowing the vaping profile is pathogen-rich, you’re not doing yourself any favors by using vaping to quit smoking.”

The research is published today (May 27) in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers collected plaque samples from under the gums of 123 people who showed no current signs of oral disease: 25 smokers, 25 nonsmokers, 20 e-cigarette users, 25 former smokers using e-cigarettes and 28 people maintaining both cigarette smoking and vaping habits at the same time.

The bacteria below the gums are the last line of defense against disease because they are the least likely to be disrupted by environmental changes in the mouth, such as food, toothpaste and tobacco.

Kumar and colleagues conducted DNA deep sequencing of the bacteria genomes to identify not just the types of microbes living in those mouths, but also what their functions were.

The profile of the oral microbiome in the vapers who had never smoked, who were young (age 21-35) and healthy and had used e-cigarettes for four to 12 months, was startling to the researchers.

The most concerning characteristics were the levels of stress in the microbial community, which were detected by the activation of genes that contribute to the creation of a mucus-like slime layer surrounding bacterial communities. The immune system is used to seeing assembled bacteria look like clearly defined communities, but Kumar said that in e-cigarette users, these communities cloaked in slime look like foreign invaders and trigger a destructive inflammatory response.

She said this change in the microbial landscape – accompanied by higher levels of proteins in vapers’ mouths that signaled the immune system was on standby to activate and produce inflammation – exponentially increases the likelihood for disease.

“The reason we’re all healthy is because our immune system has recognized these bacteria and their functions since birth and has established a sense of harmony,” Kumar said. “The problem is when you throw a curve ball with an environmental shift like this, your immune system doesn’t recognize the bacteria as friends anymore. You have to call the police on them, and that causes a huge inflammatory response.”

After that finding, Kumar and colleagues hoped to find that people who had replaced or supplemented cigarette smoking with vaping might be better off using e-cigarettes. Instead, they found that people who had traded cigarettes for a vape pen had a more vape-driven microbial profile.

“And if you smoked and vaped at the same time, which of these two effects overwhelms your system? It was vape,” Kumar said.

A longer duration of the vapers’ habit, with or without the use of nicotine or flavoring agents, made the oral conditions more severe.

Knowing the bacteria samples represented a snapshot of a person’s oral environment, the scientists used a “fake mouth” to validate what they had found in the human participants. They created conditions simulating normal oral bacteria in artificial saliva and introduced a vape cloud or clean air to the fake mouth.

The presence of e-cigarette aerosol set in motion development of the more harmful bacterial profile seen in human vapers’ mouths. And the nicotine-free aerosol consisting of glycerol and glycol, viscous sugar alcohol fluids that generate the cloud when vapers exhale, functioned as a nutrition source to fuel the altered oral environment.

“To mimic a smoking effect, the glycerol-glycol combination holds the nicotine to your throat to give you that sensation of a nicotine hit, and it produces a giant vapor cloud. It’s a very essential component of vaping,” Kumar said. “I’m not saying nicotine is good for you. But even without the nicotine, vaping has a pretty large impact on the bacterial communities our bodies have regarded as friends.”

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Co-authors include first author Sukirth Ganesan, a former graduate student in Kumar’s lab and now an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, and Shareef Dabdoub, Haikady Nagaraja, Michelle Scott, Surya Pamulapati, Micah Berman, Peter Shields and Mary Ellen Wewers, all at Ohio State.

The COVID-19 testing kits produced by the Wexner Medical Center in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Health are provided to expand and accelerate testing. Each test kit can be processed by a lab at Ohio State or elsewhere, said Tom Blincoe, executive director of Outreach and Engagement and the Ohio State Health Network.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the Outreach and Engagement team would visit hospitals across the state to share information about the medical center and determine best ways to meet the needs of those hospitals and the communities they serve. But during the pandemic, that was no longer possible because of new hospital visitor restrictions.

“We determined there was a need to do something different around testing, and our staff jumped at the chance to help,” Blincoe said. “We believe this is just something we should be doing. Part of our mission as a land-grant university is to provide the state of Ohio with whatever help we can during this pandemic.”

In addition to delivering test kits to almost 30 community hospitals across Ohio, team members pick up test specimens and bring them back to the medical center’s lab. They also transport other needed supplies to support the care of COVID-19 patients, including personal protective equipment such as masks, gowns and digital thermometers.

Delivery runs happen daily Monday through Saturday, with team members driving each afternoon to hospitals and post-acute care centers in Bellefontaine, Bucyrus, central Ohio, Cincinnati, Coldwater, Dayton, Galion, Hillsboro, Lancaster, Lima, London, Marysville, Mount Vernon, Ontario, Portsmouth, Springfield, Upper Sandusky, Van Wert, Washington Courthouse, Wilmington, Youngstown and Zanesville.

“In addition to the Outreach and Engagement drivers, this project wouldn’t be possible without supply chain management, University Reference Laboratories, Ohio State Wexner Medical Center labs, Department of Pathology, Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Engineering, and Nursing, along with Ambulatory Logistics and Distribution,” Blincoe said. “This is a coordinated team effort."

Of key importance is the fact that the majority of these test kits have been created by medical center researchers. During the COVID-19 outbreak, there’s been a critical shortage of test kit components, including the swabs used to collect samples and the sterile solution needed to transport the swabs. The test kits include nasopharyngeal swabs and vials filled with a sterile solution called viral transport media (VTM).

Since early April, the medical center has been producing its own VTM for COVID-19 test kits to expand and accelerate testing across Ohio. Some of the earlier test kits included commercially available VTM.

“This program has been a huge asset for us, and we’re extremely grateful for the support we’ve received,” said Lisa Klenke, chief executive officer for Mercer Health, a 93-bed community hospital in Coldwater, Ohio that serves 40,000 residents in Mercer County along the Indiana state line. “Testing was the biggest challenge, but having access to the testing kits and the test runs daily has been a great advantage to us. Now we’ve been able to open a drive-thru swabbing station that is benefitting the entire community.”

The researchers obliged. And the intervention they designed produced the desired results when it came to improving participants’ diet. As a group, the women in the study who watched the videos and talked to their peers over 16 weeks were more likely to have reduced their fat consumption than women in a comparison group who were given print materials about lifestyle change.

The participants were women who face stubborn health challenges – highly stressed overweight low-income mothers of young children who, for example, tend to retain 10 or more pounds of pregnancy weight after childbirth and are likely to eat high-fat foods. They are at risk for life-long obesity and potential problems for themselves and new babies if they become pregnant again.

“I asked them during focus groups who should be in the videos, and they said, ‘We want to see us. And our children. Do not lie to us and hire professionals, because we’ll be able to tell,’” said Mei-Wei Chang, lead author of the study and associate professor of nursing at The Ohio State University.

“They said, ‘We want to see them before the change and the struggles they had, and what happened after that.’”

Chang and colleagues identified two factors that led to the intervention’s success: The study was designed to appeal to the participants’ personal values and instill in these mothers enough confidence to take on the challenge of living a healthier life.

“My experience with this population is that they really want to make a change. Some might perceive that they don’t want to. But they do – they just don’t know how to,” Chang said.

The research is published online in the journal Appetite and will appear in the August print issue.

The two psychosocial factors Chang and colleagues examined in this study are known as autonomous motivation (what’s important in a person’s life) and self-efficacy (a person’s confidence in her ability to carry out a behavior or task). Previous research has shown that poverty can lead to low self-efficacy.

Autonomous motivation differs by population. In this study, the participants told researchers in focus groups before the intervention began that they wanted to be role models for their children. They hoped to be less stressed and happier, and to maintain good family relationships.

Chang recruited participants from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which serves low-income pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women and children up to age 5. Those eligible for the program must have an annual household income no higher than 185 percent of the federal poverty line.

The mothers were between the ages of 18 and 39 and their body mass index ranged from 25.0 to 39.9 – from the lowest indicator of being overweight to just below the extreme obesity range. The intervention was aimed at preventing weight gain by promoting stress management, healthy eating and physical activity. This study analyzed only the diet-related results.

During the trial, the 212 participants randomized into the intervention group watched a total of 10 videos in which women like them gave testimonials about healthy eating and food preparation, managing their stress and being physically active.

In the videos, the women wore casual clothes and told their stories, unscripted. They demonstrated meal prep with familiar foods and showed that simple, practical steps – like reading food labels – could gradually lead to a healthier lifestyle.

“They talked about a lot of things I didn’t know,” said Chang, who has worked with women enrolled in WIC for about 20 years. “They spoke their mind about what was important – like how they mentally dealt with changing behavior but not losing weight. And about being afraid to fail.”

The participants also dialed in to 10 peer support group teleconferences over the course of the study.

In phone interviews, the researchers asked the mothers about what they were eating, their confidence in sticking to a low-fat diet and why they wanted to eat more healthfully.

Based on those surveys, the researchers determined that, compared to the group reading print materials, the mothers who watched videos and spoke with their peers reported larger increases in autonomous motivation and self-efficacy and a more significant decrease in fat intake after the 16-week intervention.

“Essentially, they said, ‘If she could do it, I could do it.’ That’s why we used peers to develop the intervention,” Chang said.

The researchers are still analyzing data related to physical activity results, and have found that the intervention’s emphasis on coping self-efficacy helped reduce participants’ stress. The videos are now part of WIC’s continuing education series for mothers.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Co-authors included Alai Tan and Duane Wegener from Ohio State and Jiying Ling and Lorraine Robbins from Michigan State University.

Pelotonia will transform into a more personal experience, asking participants “What will your Pelotonia 2020 be?” and encouraging them to set individual fundraising and activity goals. While cycling is still encouraged, this year the experience is about more than just riding. By asking the community to define their own Pelotonia, the doors are open for anyone to participate and become a legend. Participants can set their own one-time or cumulative activity goal with My Pelotonia to ride, walk, run, volunteer or even create their own activity – whatever feels right to honor and support cancer research. In doing so, participants will embody Pelotonia’s 2020 Be Legendary campaign, uniting with the Pelotonia community in spirit and purpose.

“The Pelotonia community has come together in profound ways over the past 12 years, and this year will be no different. Our legendary community is unwavering in Pelotonia’s goal to fund accelerated cancer research, united in a shared sense of duty to those diagnosed with this disease,” said Doug Ulman, Pelotonia President and CEO. “While so much has recently changed, the need for critical research funding and the goal of Pelotonia has not. My Pelotonia will be an experience that is more inclusive and personal with more ways to engage and participate than ever before.”

The My Pelotonia platform will provide an online community for people to share their training and fundraising ideas, or simply cheer one another on along with the inspirational stories of everyday legends pushing forward despite challenges. Pelotonia will celebrate all efforts the weekend of August 7 with an entertaining and motivating live broadcast that mirrors the Pelotonia Opening Ceremony program the community has come to love.

To allow for even greater participation, the 2020 registration fee has been waived along with required fundraising commitments historically tied to Ride distances. In addition, Pelotonia will not have a minimum age requirement this year and the fundraising deadline has been extended to October 31, 2020. The My Pelotonia platform will share goal suggestions, and Pelotonia community leaders are already setting examples: Doug Ulman will ride from Columbus to Cincinnati as his 100+ mile goal and Cindy Hilsheimer, Pelotonia Board Member and Managing Principal, BeecherHill, will walk 200 miles and send an equal number of thank you notes to generous supporters; and Dr. Bill Farrar, CEO of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, will ride 43 miles, with his wife, to recognize the number of years that he has treated patients at The James.

“As the global scientific community shifts its focus to the important work of navigating through and overcoming COVID-19, it is paramount that we ensure that scientific discovery continues in cancer. We must maintain momentum in basic, translational, clinical and population research studies so that we continue to improve our cancer prevention and bring new clinical therapies to our patients, which will ultimately lead to better outcomes for our community,” says Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, director of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and surgical oncologist with the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). “We are grateful for the steadfast support and efforts of the Pelotonia community of riders, corporate partners, and volunteers.”

All Riders, Virtual Riders and Volunteers already signed up for Pelotonia will be able to update fundraising and activity goals for My Pelotonia starting June 2. Participants who have already paid a registration fee will have the option to direct the fee toward cancer research or defer it to 2021 registration. Incentives will be provided to My Pelotonia participants when they reach various designated fundraising levels.

“The Huntington peloton and all our colleagues take great pride in partnering and volunteering to make a difference as part of the legendary efforts of Pelotonia, and we are especially inspired to create our Pelotonia journey during this challenging time,” said Steve Steinour, Chairman, President and CEO of Huntington and Pelotonia Board Member.

With 100 percent of every dollar raised, Pelotonia will continue to provide critical funds for innovative cancer research at the OSUCCC-James, a portion of these funds supports the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology. Additionally, Pelotonia has collaborated with the OSUCCC-James to create a research fund, with an initial pledge of $1 million, to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the cancer community.

For more information on Pelotonia, please visit https://pelotonia.org/rise/. To read more about the impact of Pelotonia dollars, please visit pelotonia.org/impact and pelotonia.org/institute.

Experts at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and The Ohio State University College of Nursing say it’s important to take precautions to avoid infection, but also to deal with the stress of transitioning back to offices or businesses after an extended period of isolation.

“Uncertainty and unpredictability can really create an unhealthy amount of fear and stress, especially when it’s sustained over such a long period of time,” Dr. K. Luan Phan, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “Challenges will remain as businesses reopen, and the typical workplace will look very different following this pandemic. We’ll have to find new ways to connect with colleagues and work as a team while maintaining our distance and preventing the spread of infection.”

Precautions like taking every employee’s temperature upon arrival, providing face masks, keeping workspaces at least six feet apart and being vigilant about wiping down surfaces are important to preventing the spread of the virus. Those actions can also make everyone feel safer and less anxious.

“Physical and mental health are closely intertwined. While you practice good hygiene and physical distancing in the office, you should also practice stress-reduction,” said Bernadette Melnyk, dean of the College of Nursing and chief wellness officer at Ohio State. “For example, while you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds, take the opportunity to take five deep abdominal breaths. Doing this at least five times a day can reduce anxiety and even lower your blood pressure.”

In addition to stress relief, healthy lifestyle choices like daily physical activity, a healthy diet and getting at least seven hours of sleep per night can boost your immune system and help stave off serious illness. Experts say it’s also more important than ever to stay home when you feel sick to help keep yourself and your co-workers healthy.

To help ease their fears, Phan encourages employees to ask about what will change at work to keep them safe.

“Ask their employer, ask their team leader, how are they being protected? What precautions are in place? What new setups to the workplace environment have been established in order to keep themselves and their co-workers safe so that they don't get infected?” said Phan, who is a professor in Ohio State’s College of Medicine. “Handshakes, things that we usually do to show physical support for one another, will also not be allowable. So we'll have to find new ways to connect in this new work environment.”

There can be a lot of fear surrounding the return to normalcy or what will now become normal, so Phan and Melnyk offer these tips to help transition safely to a post-COVID-19 work life:

Manage Stress: Many people already have a lot of stress and anxiety during this time, and adjusting to being back in the workplace may add to those feelings. Utilizing stress-reduction apps, practicing mindfulness and self-care that calms your breathing and nerves, and making a plan for you and your family to manage the transition back to work can all go a long way to building resilience and helping you feel better about returning.

Don’t let your guard down: Just because there’s an ease on restrictions doesn’t mean the threat is gone. You still need to take precautions – wash your hands for 20 seconds while taking five big deep breaths, keep sanitizer and disinfecting wipes handy and clean surfaces often. Follow existing guidelines about wearing a mask and avoid shaking hands in common areas, meetings or when interacting with customers.

Keep your distance: Avoid crowding into conference rooms and keep your workspace at least six feet from your nearest co-worker. Continue holding virtual meetings and limit direct contact. Many adjustments were made to help employees work from home during the coronavirus outbreak. Health experts recommend continuing with remote work or staggering which employees are in the office when possible.

Stay fit to be well: Make changes that help you boost your immune system and fight off illnesses. About 80 percent of chronic conditions are preventable by engaging in a few lifestyle behavior changes, such as regular physical activity, eating at least five fruits and vegetables per day, not smoking, and limiting alcohol intake if you drink up to one drink a day if you are a woman and two per day if you are a male. Those small changes can make a major difference in fighting the virus if you’re infected.

Look out for your co-workers’ health: Stay home if you don’t feel well, get your flu shot and, if a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available in the future, get that, too. As workplaces begin to re-open, many are monitoring employee health with measures such as daily temperature checks. If your employer doesn’t take precautions you feel are needed to prevent the spread of illness, speak up so that your entire office can be and feel safer.

The program will be piloted with nurses in New York and Michigan – two of the states hit hardest by the pandemic – and rolled out nationwide in the coming weeks.

Even before the current crisis hit, burnout among nurses had reached an all-time high, with some studies estimating that up to 63 percent of nurses experience job-induced stress, anxiety and depression. In addition, nurses are at increased risk of suicide. More than half report being in suboptimal mental or physical health, which research shows can lead to more errors in caring for patients.

The intensity of treating a high volume of acutely ill COVID-19 patients has exacerbated this issue.

The partnership initiative will provide access to wellness support and evidence-based strategies from faculty and advanced practice nursing students from the College of Nursing. Nurses employed by Trusted Health who are working in facilities with COVID-19 patients will be able to access an emotional support line staffed by seasoned mental health nurse practitioner faculty and supervised students who will review stressors with callers and offer coping strategies and stress-reduction techniques.

Nurses who call the emotional support line may also opt to participate in a wellness support partnership supported by the College of Nursing for a period of four or eight weeks. This will include cognitive-behavioral skills building, motivational interviewing, mindfulness and therapeutic communication aimed at finding sustainable solutions to enhance the nurses’ health and well-being, both during the pandemic and for life.

“Our health care professionals on the front lines of this pandemic deserve not only our highest regards for their selfless service, but also our support to handle what they are feeling and experiencing because of this crisis,” said Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, university chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing.

“Our college’s faculty, staff and students participating in this effort are well-versed in evidence-based interventions that will not only help these nurses survive, but thrive and build the resilience needed to continue to provide high-quality care and save lives.”

Added Dan Weberg, head of clinical innovation at Trusted, “As a nurses-first company, Trusted was founded on a simple idea: Nurses are the backbone of our health care system, and we must do more to support them. The COVID-19 crisis has pushed this issue into the national consciousness, and we are committed to using this moment to advocate for and identify new ways to support the mental well-being of nurses not just on the front lines, but everywhere.”

Since the onset of COVID-19, Trusted has been focused on meeting the unprecedented demand for health care workers by matching nurses who have raised their hands to help with hospitals battling the pandemic.

Trusted was among the first to offer guaranteed quarantine pay for all of its nurses, and has made its nurse advocate team – former bedside nurses who offer guidance throughout the job search process – available 24/7 to support the needs of Trusted nurses working on the front lines. Over the last several weeks, nearly 40,000 nurses have signed up via Trusted to work during the crisis.

Pets might be anxious, too – at the same time most are probably glad their owners are home all day, every day. Even good change can be hard for domestic animals to adjust to, says M. Leanne Lilly, assistant professor-clinical of veterinary clinical sciences at The Ohio State University.

Lilly, who specializes in veterinary behavioral medicine, was among a panel of College of Veterinary Medicine experts who addressed questions submitted by pet owners during an April 9 webinar.

“Treat your pets like family. Remember this is a hard change for them, too, so make sure their behavioral needs are met,” she said. “There are more chances for inappropriate interactions from a pet perspective. Don’t overdo it.

“Be gentle with yourselves as you’re being gentle with your pets.”

Many questions from viewers revolved around a recent study in China that revealed cats and ferrets appear to be susceptible to getting sick after being inoculated with the novel coronavirus. The findings also suggested that cats could infect each other. The study found that dogs, pigs, chickens and ducks are able to resist the virus’s efforts to make copies of itself and cause infection.

Jeanette O’Quin, assistant professor-clinical of veterinary preventive medicine, said that the results of that single study need to be considered along with the rarity of natural cases in animals. Pet owners probably needn’t worry much about risk of coronavirus infection to cats and dogs in their homes, she said.

Researchers introduced a very high dose of the virus to animals in the study. And the cats that were infected recovered without incident after having mild symptoms: respiratory problems, fever and lethargy, which are symptoms linked to many common pet illnesses.

“What that study tells us is what’s possible, but it doesn’t really tell us what’s probable,” said O’Quin, a specialist in infectious disease control. “This is a distinctly human virus that passes readily from person to person.

“The risk to animals is very low, and the risk from animals to people is even lower.”

Essentially, the experts said that what it takes for humans to stay safe right now is also good for pets: Shelter in place together, avoid pet play dates and when walking dogs, keep them on a leash and maintain a safe distance between yourself and your pet and other owners and their dogs.

Owners who have tested positive for COVID-19 and don’t have assistance with pet care should avoid cuddles and kisses and are advised to wear a cloth mask and wash their hands before and after contact with their pets.

Private practices and hospitals are taking special precautions to protect animal and human health if a pet requires veterinary care during the pandemic, said Roger Fingland, executive associate dean and chief medical officer of the college.

The first thing pet owners should do, even in an emergency, is make a phone call to their veterinarian, Fingland said. Some veterinarians with existing relationships with their clients may be able to give advice via telemedicine.

If a pet requires in-person care or hospitalization, pet owners should expect curbside drop-offs and pickups of their animals and frequent phone, email or text contact about a care plan. Visitation generally isn’t allowed except in end-of-life cases.

“Veterinarians are seeing mostly urgent and emergent cases,” Fingland said. “Very few elective procedures are being done. That’s to save PPE (personal protective equipment) for human use.”

Ideally, pet owners should be able to pull together a quarantine kit of food and medication if two weeks of isolation are required. Recommended supplies, as well as information updates as conditions change during the pandemic, are available on the college’s website.

College of Veterinary Medicine Dean Rustin Moore noted that about three-fourths of American households have pets and that during difficult times, the love and companionship of a pet can make a real difference in human health.

“Interacting with a pet has been shown through scientific evidence to have positive benefits on the physical and mental well-being of people,” Moore said. “Petting, snuggling, cuddling and looking into the eyes of a pet has been shown to lead to physiological changes in the human body.

“Ninety percent of us who have pets consider them as part of our family. They should be treated as such during COVID-19.”

The Ohio State: Wellness app is now available on Android devices. Beginning this week, users can now download the app on any Android or iOS device. For people using the app on an Android phone or tablet, the features and information are the same as the iOS version.

“The features themselves, they pair equally across both platforms. If Android displays news articles one way across the board, we try to apply those styles to Android versus iOS for a better user experience,” said Nick Rotonda, senior web and mobile developer in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. “The features themselves are pretty similar, but the way that the information gets displayed could be a little different.”

The wellness app is organized into sections to help locate useful resources:

• “Explore” helps students find articles and information focused on student wellness.
• “Support” offers resources for recovery and proactive wellness.
• “My Wellness” enables tracking to support wellness goals.
• “Crisis” offers directions for quickly accessing support.

Undergraduate, graduate and professional students at all campuses are the primary audience – thousands of them already received the app when it was sent to Digital Flagship iPads. Although designed for students, faculty and staff are encouraged to download and explore the app - most of the tips and guidance are useful for anyone.

The app was developed by students, faculty and staff following recommendations from the university’s Suicide and Mental Health Task Force. The app is a continuously updated source of information at a time when students, faculty and staff are facing new challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of the different groups across campus who’ve been working on this project have been committed to provide these resources to all students across all platforms,” said Grace Buchholz, marketing and communications lead with Digital Flagship. “It’s especially important during these times, when we know this information is more needed than ever before. We have new content that we’re putting into the app every week to try to help students navigate the changes that are happening right now.”

Developing the app was a cross-institutional partnership between the Office of Distance Education and eLearning, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Suicide and Mental Health Task Force, Office of Student Life’s Counseling and Consultation Service and Student Wellness Center, Office of Institutional Equity, USG, the university’s Suicide Prevention Program, regional campus mental health services, Ohio Mental Health and Addiction Services and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Medical students at The Ohio State University are preparing to graduate early and help in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic continues to put significant stress on health care workers across the globe, dozens of Ohio State senior medical students have asked if they can graduate early in order to enter the workforce. The Board of Trustees will hold a special meeting Friday to consider the request.

Students who met all graduation requirements by April 3 and declare their intention to join the health care workforce are eligible for the early graduation. If the request is approved, the students will graduate April 12 – weeks before the scheduled May 3 graduation date.

Paige Hackenberger, a fourth-year medical student, is one of those volunteers. The Michigan native is scheduled to begin her residency at Northwestern University and hopes to graduate early to support her peers in the medical community. The epidemic hits close to home for Hackenberger.

“So many of my classmates have had their plans upended and changed during this pandemic, and their individual decisions have come from their own set of circumstances and obligations. For me, I realized I am connected to several potential needs through my past, present and future,” she said. “I grew up in Michigan, a state that has been overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. I have attended medical school in Ohio, a state that has demonstrated leadership in preparedness and pandemic response. And I will be attending residency in Illinois, a state with areas of high population density and growing needs related to COVID-19.”

Hackenberger said she hopes that if she can graduate early, she will be able to help reduce the burden on current health care workers. She said she would be happy to assist in clinical or non-clinical roles if needed.

“The additional support from these volunteer medical students will be indispensable in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic,” said James Rocco, interim dean of the College of Medicine. “It speaks to the culture of service at Ohio State that these students are ready to accept this early challenge and help their fellow health care workers on the front lines.”

Ohio State is not alone in considering this option. Medical schools across the country are offering an early graduation option to help confront the challenges caused by the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

The university’s proposal of an optional early graduation is in line with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education guidelines for early graduation.

Some of the 54 senior medical students eligible and interested in the proposed April 12 graduation have been contacted by institutions in Ohio and other states at which they will serve their residencies with requests that they consider an early start.

Depending on the size of the coming surge in COVID-19 cases, volunteer graduates who have matched their residencies at Wexner Medical Center could serve in a physician extender role. Residents would work with the “essential” physicians in each medical center department who can’t be reassigned and are needed to provide care for emergent outpatient visits, hospitals inpatients and consult services. The recent graduates would assist those physicians in performing their duties.

“Some of our students have dreamed about being doctors their whole lives,” said Jennifer McCallister, associate dean for medical education. “This would allow them to provide a significant contribution and give them the opportunity to help when the medical world needs them the most.”

For Hackenberger, it would be a chance to serve her community, despite the challenges and concerns facing medical professionals.

“As I think about joining the medical field during this pandemic, I still have a lot of fear and questions. Will I know what to do or how to react to situations that nobody has encountered until now? Will I be exposed or fall ill myself?” she said.

“In spite of that, I also have experienced a lot of affirmation and optimism — that science and research are more critical than ever, that studying medicine has given me the opportunity to serve others in ways I couldn’t have originally imagined, that health care is deeply interdisciplinary and requires the expertise of all providers, and that I have been trained to process, learn from and contribute to unexpected scenarios.”

“Telehealth care allows our providers to offer high-quality clinical care while ensuring the safety of our providers, staff, patients and visitors,” said L. Arick Forrest, medical director of ambulatory services at the Wexner Medical Center. “Our doctors are working with patients to determine whether their current health concerns or follow-up visits are suitable for a telehealth visit.”

To care for patients remotely, the medical center deployed more than 200 cameras, updated more than 500 computers and set up over 2,000 accounts in Updox, a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform. The James set up more than 40 telehealth stations in private exam rooms and offices within the hospital to ensure patient confidentiality during consults. All providers are equipped to provide these private consultations from a location outside of their usual clinic.

“We want to make sure only the patients who truly must be seen in person come to our clinical buildings,” said David Cohn, chief medical officer for The James. “Our patients with cancer are already at a risk for infection as a result of their cancer or cancer treatment, so we are being especially vigilant about putting protections in place to maintain their health and wellness.”

Ohio State Wexner Medical Center offers the following same-day and by-appointment telehealth visits:

• Video visits: via the Ohio State MyHealth app, Updox or another web-based video messaging platform.
• E-Visits: Patients complete a detailed questionnaire about their medical history and current symptoms. The provider reviews the responses and will either determine a care plan or recommend a follow-up appointment.
• Telephone Visits: Providers and patients discuss medical concerns via phone.

A MyChart account is not required to have a telehealth appointment with an Ohio State provider.

Telehealth is offered by all specialties but not for all appointment types, as each patient’s needs are different. Telehealth immediate care visits are appropriate for non-urgent health issues such as colds, flu, back pain, diarrhea, headache, heartburn, sinus problems and urinary tract infections. Providers can diagnosis conditions, electronically prescribe medication, if deemed necessary, and may recommend patients go to the nearest Ohio State Emergency Department, Walk-In Care or AfterHours location for further care and treatment. Patients must be physically located in the state of Ohio.

“Over the past decade, the field of telehealth has been growing to meet the needs of patients and to improve access to care, and we need it now more than ever,” said J. Nwando Olayiwola, chair of the Department of Family Medicine and professor of family medicine at the College of Medicine. “Many people are comfortable using technology to connect with family and friends. We hope that this transition in health care will be seamless for them.”

To prepare for a virtual visit, patients should be able to describe their symptoms in detail, ask questions and share photos or use online tools to provide clinical information such as blood pressure, weight and heart rate. A strong internet connection, good lighting and a clear connection are recommended.

Medicare, Medicaid and most insurance plans cover one or more telehealth service.

Ilic is an assistant professor of human nutrition in the Department of Human Sciences, College of Education and Human Ecology, and an OSU Extension food safety state specialist.

Q: What do I need to know about food safety during the COVID-19 outbreak?

A: It is important to remember that COVID-19 is not a foodborne disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are not aware of any reports suggesting COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging.

Coronavirus is not a gastrointestinal illness and cannot be contracted by ingesting contaminated foods. It cannot multiply on foods. Like any virus, it requires a host cell to multiply. COVID-19 attacks lung cells.

There is a good deal of misinformation out there. Please make sure to get your recommendations from credible sources.

Q. If I cannot get COVID-19 from food, how is it transmitted?

The virus most often transmits from person to person. This is because the virus resides in body fluids of the mouth and nose cavities.

The transmission occurs when the infected person sneezes, coughs or even talks. Droplets containing COVID-19 can reach a healthy person’s nose, mouth or eyes.

In addition, if an infected person makes close contact, such as a handshake, the virus also can transmit to the healthy person. If handwashing does not follow immediately, and if the heathy person touches their face, the virus will transmit.

The virus also can transmit if an infected person touches an object or surface without washing their hands. The surface can serve as a source of contamination for the virus to the healthy person if handwashing is not practiced.

Frequent handwashing, refraining from touching the face and diligently practicing physical distancing are the best way to protect oneself from contracting the virus.

Q. Because it has been said that COVID-19 can live on surfaces, such as my kitchen counter, what should I do to stay safe?

Viruses cannot multiply on inanimate surfaces; they require a living host to multiply.

However, a recent study found that the coronaviruses can persist and remain infectious for several hours and up to several days on inanimate surfaces. So, it is important to clean and sanitize surfaces.

This is always true for your kitchen counter, especially during food preparation. Some advice includes:

• Always clean dirty kitchen surfaces with soap and water before you sanitize. If you do not do this, the sanitation step is not going to be effective.
• Use a disinfectant product on the surfaces according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
• Commercial disinfectants come in three styles: liquid, spray or wipes. All have different instructions that have to be followed in order for the disinfection to be effective.
• Do not use concentrated bleach for disinfecting. It is very toxic.
• Do not use any of the surface cleaners on your hands in place of hand sanitizer. They may cause damage to the skin.

Q. Can COVID-19 contaminate food?

COVID-19 is not foodborne. Although it may contaminate surfaces, as discussed, a person will not become sick due to the food consumption.

Some studies have shown that coronavirus can be stable on the surface of lettuce in laboratory conditions. However, from the long experience with previous outbreaks of coronaviruses, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), transmission through food consumption is not likely to occur.

This said, you should always take all the food safety precautions normally used in the kitchen to avoid foodborne illness.

Q: What food safety practices should I use in the kitchen, during the COVID-19 outbreak and at all times?

COVID-19 transmission from food has not been shown. However, consumers always should follow all good hygiene practices and food safety precautions recommended for handling and preparing food in normal times.

Here are simple tips:

• Before preparing, serving or eating food, wash your hands up to the wrists with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before rinsing your hands.
• After drying on a clean towel, refrain from touching your face, mouth or nose.
• Refrigerate foods promptly after arriving from the grocery store.
• Wash all fresh produce, such as lettuce, thoroughly under running water.
• After handling raw meat or egg white or yolk, wash hands with soap and water again.
• Clean cutting surfaces, plates and utensils after handling raw foods and prior to handling any ready-to-eat food.
• Always cook foods to required temperatures according to the USDA to kill bacteria that leads to foodborne illness
• Refrigerate all leftovers promptly – within two hours, and make sure to reheat leftovers to the minimal recommended temperature of 165F.
• Wash produce under clean running water. Do not use soap to wash it. Wash it before consumption, but if you decide to wash before putting it in the refrigerator, dry it before storing.
• The chances of contaminating your refrigerator with the virus are low; remember, the virus does need to get to your respiratory tract to make you sick.

Q. Grocery shopping: What steps should I take during the COVID-19 outbreak?

The biggest risk of COVID-19 transmission is being around individuals who carry the virus. During the lock down, do not go to the store if you are symptomatic.

When grocery shopping, keep physical distance. The minimal distance recommended to avoid droplet transmission from another person is 6-8 feet.

However, it has been shown that the droplets after someone coughs or sneezes can travel farther than that. Refrain from talking with people.

Tips for grocery shopping:

• Before heading for the store or market, wash hands with soap and water.
• Before entering the store, use hand sanitizer containing a minimum of 60% alcohol.
• Sanitize shopping cart and basket handles before and after use. Grocery stores often have sanitization wipes near the entrance.
• While in the store, maintain physical distance. Avoid aisles with other shoppers.
• Come prepared with a list and spend minimal time shopping.
• Avoid touching produce except for your selections.
• Avoid touching products that you don’t need to touch.
• If possible, use the self-check line. Opt to use a card instead of cash. It’s a good idea to wipe the card afterward with a sanitizing cloth or wipe.
• Use hand sanitizer after leaving the store.

Upon arriving home:

• Wash your hands before storing food.
• Refrigerate perishable food promptly; don’t overload your refrigerator.
• If you buy a large quantity of produce, think about freezing some of it to avoid waste.
• Although sanitizing packaging is not necessary, for people at increased risk or who feel anxious about potential surface transmission, you can clean and sanitize food packages before storing.
• Use or freeze raw meat and poultry before their expiration date to stay safe and reduce waste.

Q: What should I look for in hand sanitizers? Can I make my own?

• Remember that hand sanitizer is only effective if your hands are already visibly clean.
• Only hand sanitizers that contain 60% or more alcohol are effective against coronavirus.
• If making your own hand sanitizer, follow the instructions from credible sources to ensure that the disinfectant is effective.

Q: Takeout food and delivery - What should I be aware of to stay safe?

Currently, no reports have been made that takeout or drive-through food has led to spread of illness.

Takeout minimizes the number of touches by people, especially if the restaurant is practicing social distancing and good preparation practices.

Delivered foods present no risks if the restaurant practices a no-touch/no-interaction policy during preparation. However, independent delivery drivers cannot guarantee low touch and proper physical distancing during deliveries.

Note the following to minimize risk of transmission from packaging or delivery:

• Use measures to reduce the amount of handling of packaging.
• Practice handwashing and use hand sanitizer before and after handling packaging.
• Grocery delivery is a little safer but still presents more risk than picking up groceries yourself.
• If you use delivery for restaurant food, receive it, unpack it and dispose of the packaging, and then wash your hands. Do not touch your nose, mouth, eyes or face until after this procedure is complete.
• Many restaurants are volunteering information about the measures they take for food safety. Ask the manager.

Information sheets are available at producesafety.osu.edu/COVID-19

Four weeks ago, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther announced they had made the difficult decision to limit spectators and cancel the expo at the Arnold Sports Festival to be held March 4-7. Central Ohio didn’t identify its first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, until 10 days later.

Though the news surprised many, the decision reflected weeks of discussions among community leaders from many sectors about planning for what appeared imminent: an international pandemic that would become a public health crisis in the United States.

During an online panel discussion Tuesday about the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact so far, Andrew Thomas, Ohio State Wexner Medical Center’s chief clinical officer, reflected on the university’s ongoing preparedness efforts. The pandemic planning began with a conference call with 80 university participants on Jan. 22, one day after the first U.S. COVID-19 case was identified.

Disaster preparedness comes with the health care and higher education territory, and Thomas, also senior vice president for health sciences, said the medical center has been effective at ramping up patient testing, partnering with Battelle on filling supply-chain gaps and cooperating with Ohio hospitals near and far to prepare for the expected surge in COVID-19 cases. On March 12, the university announced suspension of face-to-face classes through spring semester and by March 16, employees who could were required to work from home.

Amy Fairchild, dean of Ohio State’s College of Public Health, hosted the panel discussion featuring Ohio State experts and guest speaker Irwin Redlener, director and founder of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Redlener, a national expert on the public health ramifications of large-scale catastrophic events, was scheduled to visit Ohio State for the event, which was converted to an online discussion over Zoom. President Michael V. Drake joined the conversation as well.

“Public health is the normally invisible foundation for healthy populations,” Fairchild said. “This moment in time has exposed the ways in which the foundation has collapsed. We need to see investment in a strong, fair, nimble public health infrastructure, not just to prepare for a pandemic, but to support and protect us day in and day out and year in and year out.”

Redlener called attention to the threat the pandemic poses not just to people infected with the coronavirus, but also to uninfected patients who need care for urgent problems or chronic diseases. Outpatient offices are closed and health care professionals are volunteering to shift their attention to the “COVID onslaught,” he said. “We are going to have trouble getting the kind of care that we’re used to. The world of the non-COVID patient is worth talking about.”

There are lots of unanswered questions – like when and how will this end – and a lot of people to worry about: at least 60 million Americans living in rural areas already short on health professionals, and low- and middle-income families that desperately need the federal relief checks approved by Congress to put food on the table.

But, Redlener said, we will emerge more resilient and able to adapt better to crisis as individuals and, ideally, as global citizens.

“If we come out of this situation with a new appreciation for the necessity of the international community to cooperate and collaborate to solve major planetary challenges … that would be a wonderful thing,” he said.

Between now and then, there will be a surge in COVID-19 patients in Ohio, said Michael Oglesbee, director of Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) and professor of veterinary biosciences.

The IDI has led a partnership among Ohio State academicians and clinicians, the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Hospital Association to design a “contact network” model that takes into account the effects of disrupting networks through social distancing. The model predictions are refined daily based on the latest symptomatic test-positive COVID-19 cases reported.

Current predictions suggest cases will peak in the second or third week of April. The cumulative number of cases over the surge could number as high as 210,000 – compared to an estimated 375,000 cases had Ohio not adopted widespread social-distancing practices. These predictions are still changing as testing capability improves, Oglesbee noted.

“Our most recent results indicate that the social distancing appears to be even more effective than initially estimated,” he said.

The social distancing and stay-at-home orders are taking an enormous toll on businesses around the state and nation, and eventually will cost a lot for the insurance industry, said Philip Renaud, executive director of the Risk Institute at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business.

In times of crisis, Renaud said, businesses should first establish and maintain daily contact with a critical incident management team. This group can work together to identify essential activities and employees, communicate internally and externally while activities are reduced and help the company make an orderly transition back to normal practices.

“We’re not going to flip the switch and suddenly tomorrow have normal business activity,” he said.

Some people, including a host of Ohio State students, have been able to adapt quickly to what Moritz College of Law Professor Marc Spindelman described as a sort of ad-hoc mutual aid society, looking out for others’ well-being without expecting anything in return in recognition that “need is part of crisis.”

“The social distancing and isolation we’re practicing is a great heroic act of civic friendship,” he said.

Two examples: Medical students whose clinical rotations were suspended set up a child care operation for front-line doctors, nurses and other health care professionals whose lives were upended by the closure of schools. And Ohio State students are also behind the community-outreach Help Columbus Facebook page, where people can offer support or request aid.

This kind of arrangement, not mandated by government or law, Spindelman said, “works because it’s voluntary.”

Panelists pondered what individuals, institutions and governments should do, balancing what the science says with public policy implications, to help prevent an unmanageable spike in COVID-19 cases in the next couple of weeks.

Drake likened the aggressive social-distancing measures taken by colleges and universities to extending 30 feet of rope to someone treading water 20 feet from shore.

“I’d like to look at what’s the most we can do that’s likely to continue to have an effect, get there, bend the curve as flat as we can, and then release restrictions in a gradual fashion as we see that it’s safe,” he said.

Several panelists predicted that people will come out of the other side of the pandemic with more empathy for the needs of others and especially grateful to health care professionals for their loyalty and commitment. Oglesbee noted that we should also be on the ready for the next infectious disease that inevitably will come along.

“We really need to maintain vigilance in the absence of disease,” he said. “The problem goes away and we forget about it. We cannot do that.”