Aquielle Person is a Research Assistant at the Pandemic Center who is largely interested in using epidemiological and biostatistical methods to identify and address health disparities. In 2022, she was a Summer Public Health Scholar through the CUPS program at Columbia University. During that time, she was also a Research Assistant at the WHO Center for Global Mental Health. Her research focused on eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors in sexual minorities as well as access to treatment. She was also a Research Assistant at a lab at Brown that studied sleep disparities in adolescent populations. The findings from that study were presented at the 2022 Society of Behavioral Medicine Conference. In 2019, she served as a Research Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania investigating language acquisition in infants and toddlers. She holds an Sc.B. in Psychology from Brown University.
American democracy and public health effectiveness are inextricable. American health security depends on maximizing the ability to live in a free, pluralistic society able to coherently manage a public health emergency. In turn, the health of US democracy depends on citizens’ faith and trust in institutions—especially government—to protect them in a crisis such as a pandemic. Given disease threats like mpox or H5N1 avian flu, the looming potential for a worst-case biological crisis begs for a well-prepared nation. Unfortunately, the United States, because of or despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, is now more politically polarized and less prepared to mount a united response to a major health emergency. That is a collective danger that threatens Americans and imperils the world.
Any effective future response to a biological crisis must protect individual freedom, foster responsibility for one another, and address the unique needs and concerns of every community, including the most vulnerable. Yet pandemic response tools like masking, vaccinations, and social distancing have become flashpoints that pit individual freedoms against collective responsibility. And trust in US governmental institutions has consequently eroded. Confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dropped nearly 30 points—79 percent to 52 percent—from March 2020 to May 2022.
This steep drop in trust comes at a dangerous time.