Vol. 38, No. 18

1-24-2008
By: Kristen Convery

Preparing for the threat: Program turns fight into a group effort

Ken Lee, director of Ohio State’s Food Safety Center, is impressed by the teamwork he’s seen among the half-dozen colleges working together on the university’s Public Health Preparedness Program.

“I’ve been at Ohio State now for 17 years,” Lee said. “I’ve never really participated [in] or seen a major funded initiative that connected six colleges as intimately as this does.”

Representatives from each college meet regularly to discuss the group’s direction, chart its progress and map out new hires. The program has added one faculty member and plans to hire six more in the next fiscal year.

“A lot of us in that group started thinking more globally: ‘What’s best for the university?’ rather than ‘What’s best for my college?’” said Michael Lairmore, chair of the Department of Veterinary Biosciences.

Bill Saville, chair of the Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, said outsiders are taking notice, too. At a recent national conference, several researchers who wanted to know more about the group approached Saville.

“The amount of interest in how we got six colleges to work together was incredible,” he said.

Researchers in the program agree that Ohio State is one of the few places with the resources to make such a project succeed. It’s rare for an institution to have public health, medicine and veterinary medicine colleges on one campus, not to mention experts in food safety, microbiology and pharmacy.

“We have an amazing range of expertise that will enable us to comprehensively look at infections all the way through the food chain, whether it be the water, whether it be plants, whether it be animals or humans,” said Larry Schlesinger, director of the Medical Center’s infectious diseases division. “We can tackle this as one group. That’s what gives us the unique advantage over other campuses.”

The following (in no particular order) is a quick look at what each participating college is contributing to the Public Health Preparedness Program.

Veterinary Medicine
Veterinary medicine researchers study zoonotic diseases: Illnesses such as SARS and West Nile virus that can be transmitted from animals to humans. The college now offers a master’s degree in veterinary health, and all vet students are trained to be first responders in the case of an outbreak of zoonotic diseases.

“Most of the colleges of veterinary medicine across the country are forming partnerships with schools of public health, but [public health schools] only teach the human side of it,” Saville said. “We teach the veterinary side of it.”

Biological Sciences
John Reeve, chair of the Department of Microbiology, said any research program focusing on public health will naturally include a focus on microbes, the miniscule organisms that carry bacterial infections.

Pharmacy
Pharmacy researchers work to create two types of drugs: Vaccines and small-molecule drugs. Vaccines prevent people from contracting infectious diseases, while small-molecule therapies cure those who are sick. Scientists also are studying new drugs to treat so-called superbugs that have become resistant to existing medicine. Pharmacy Dean Robert Brueggemeier called it “a whole area of exciting research.”

Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
“The pathogen doesn’t care if it’s infecting you by air, water or food. It’s going to cause problems,” said Lee. To that end, researchers in the college provide an “environmental point of view.” Scientists at Ohio State’s Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster also are involved.

Public Health
The College of Public Health, which was promoted from department status just last February, is the preventive-health and disaster-planning arm of the Public Health Preparedness initiative. Dean Stanley Lemeshow said researchers there are asking a lot of “what if” questions. What if a huge number of people got the flu at the same time? What if a lot of people were dying? What if people couldn’t come to work?

“We always assume that if we got sick, there would be somebody at the hospital to take care of us,” Lemeshow said. “But what if the people who work at the hospital are sick also? And who’s in charge if all this happens?

“From the perspective of planning for what we hope will never happen, I think it’s something that we all have to play a role in.”

Medicine
At the Center for Microbial Interface Biology, which Schlesinger founded, researchers are studying pandemic diseases, including AIDS and tuberculosis.

Also, should a health crisis hit Columbus, the Medical Center would be one of the first sites for patients to be diagnosed and treated.

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