51ÁÔĆć

51ÁÔĆć grad creates mental health support program to help LGBTQ youth statewide

Illustration of a blue pyramid shaped prism with rainbow light to the right.

By Katie Crowther
TMJ4
June 13, 2021

MILWAUKEE — A recent University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate created a program to help support LGBTQ youth — both mentally and emotionally — and it launched statewide in the middle of the pandemic.

It’s called PRISM, which stands for Peer Recover in Supportive Mutuality.

It’s the brainchild of Erica Steib, who came up with the concept for her final project while studying at 51ÁÔĆć’s Zilber School of Public Health.

PRISM was put into use by the organization Mental Health America of Wisconsin.

“It’s a safe place to explore concepts around identity and mental health,” Steib said.

Steib is leading a team of seven certified peer support specialists, including Jay Zulhlke.

“It is so important to have someone to talk to who gets it,” Zuhlke said. “You can be authentically you.”

They monitor a phone line and email account and guarantee a response within hours to provide support to anyone who reaches out. Through text messaging, phone calls, virtual, and in-person meet-ups, the peer support specialist helps that person navigate challenges and goals. More importantly, the peer support specialist is someone to talk to about anything, without judgement.

“We can talk about anything,” Zuhlke said. “What it’s like coming out to your family, what it’s like coming out at a job, what it’s like coming out to friends.”

It’s a job that hits home for Zuhlke, who is studying social work at 51ÁÔĆć.

“I came out as trans about two years ago,” Zuhlke said. “Throughout growing up, and high school especially, it would have been nice to have someone I could go to. So often I was just isolating myself about it. I didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t think anyone would understand. The PRISM peer support specialists do get it. We are here and we will help you along this journey. Sit with you, listen to you, whatever you need, we’re going to be there to support you through it.”

That kind of support has never been more critical, according to the Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.

To talk to one of the peer support specialists:

  • call 414-336-7974 anytime
  • email PRISM@MHAWISCONSIN.ORG
  • send a direct message to “The Prism Program” on Facebook or Instagram

Wisconsin Public Radio: Understanding the Delta Variant

Zilber School of Public Health Epidemiology Associate Professor, Amanda Simanek

By Colleen Leahy
Wisconsin Public Radio
June 25, 2021

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is likely to dominate in the U.S. within weeks. The Delta variant is more contagious than other versions of the virus, and may be more likely to infect children. Zilber School of Public Health Epidemiology Associate Professor, Amanda Simanek (MPH, PhD), went on Wisconsin Public Radio to explain.

First 12 year old vaccinated at 51ÁÔĆć’s vaccine clinic

Dr. Simanek and child at an immunization clinic both are wearing masks to protect from COVID-19.

With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now , the vaccine clinic at 51ÁÔĆć delivered its first vaccine to a person in this age group on Thursday, May 13.

Twelve year old Addison, the son of Dr. Amanda Simanek of the 51ÁÔĆć Zilber School of Public Health, was the first of his age group to receive the shot at 51ÁÔĆć’s vaccine clinic.

Dr. Simanek, who accompanied her son to the clinic, said, “Dr. Kim Litwack (51ÁÔĆć Dean of Nursing) took our picture and everyone cheered, it was awesome! The excitement and energy in the clinic with so many parents bringing their kids in was palpable.”

You can learn more about 51ÁÔĆć’s vaccine clinic here.

A social approach to fighting COVID-19 misinformation

Miscommunication info graphic

By Laura Otto
51ÁÔĆć Research
February 8, 2021

Growing up, Amanda Simanek saw how friends and family sought out her father, an automotive mechanic, for trusted advice on car repairs. Years later, she’s tapping into trust as a way to fight misinformation in the midst a global pandemic.

Simanek is an associate professor of epidemiology in the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, she joined an all-female interdisciplinary team of scientists who launched a social media-based science communication campaign to answer questions about this new disease.

The initiative, called Dear Pandemic, provides comprehensive and unbiased information about COVID-19, delivered in easily digestible question-and-answer servings through posts on the social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Launched in March 2020 to help people navigate the onslaught of COVID-19 information, some factual and some not, the campaign now has more than 80,000 followers. “One of the key things we’ve learned is how fundamental trust is to successful spreading of science-based information,” Simanek says.

Those with COVID-19-related questions can  where previously answered questions are archived. The group uses a just-the-facts approach to provide practical, actionable information, and their followers often share and boost the messages.

“By communicating on these channels, we’re beating the spread of misinformation on social media at its own game,” she says. “Some of our posts reach upward of 100,000 people.” Those metrics give Simanek and her colleagues a good start in the natural next step: assessing how effective this intervention has been at stopping the spread of misinformation and affecting pandemic-related health behaviors. The questions submitted by followers also provide additional data on potential holes in public understanding of the pandemic.

Through this effort, Simanek and her colleagues are not only helping people know how best to protect themselves and others, but they are also laying the groundwork for researchers to understand best practices for science communication in the context of a global pandemic.

The team plans to continue its science communication efforts through Dear Pandemic as long as needed and may eventually transition the campaign into a permanent science education endeavor.

Year of COVID-19: Explore the past and future of Wisconsin​

Two Health Care Workers in protective equipment walk down hallway with arms around each other.

By Maddie Burakoff
Spectrum News 1
March 11, 2021

MILWAUKEE — A year ago, for many Americans, COVID-19 got real.
What started as a faraway threat quickly started hitting close to home. As March rolled around, we saw a rapid succession of scary events: Cases grew stateside, the World Health Organization called the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and the U.S. declared its own national emergency.

We’re using this anniversary to look back on the past year of the pandemic, thinking about where we’ve been and what lessons we can take away.

In this article, we’ll unpack some of the trends that have affected Wisconsinites across different parts of life: The spread of the virus, the state’s response, the recent arrival of vaccines, education, social impacts, and economic impacts. We’ll also look toward the future to see where our state is heading.

The story of our year is one of historic moments, devastating losses and incredible resilience. So let’s dive in…

Social impact
In the beginning, there were Zooms. As sharing air became dangerous, Wisconsinites looked for new ways to connect and found moments of socially distanced joy: Small outdoor weddings, at-home graduations, virtual happy hours, and remote acts of kindness.

But as the pandemic has dragged on, these efforts haven’t been enough to stave off the mental and emotional toll of a devastating year. As of a January report, more than 40% of U.S. adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, with young adults and people of color seeing the most strain. UW-Milwaukee professor Amanda Simanek said that as a social epidemiologist, she’s concerned about the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic’s social effects — from isolation to economic anxiety to the breakdown of social circles.

The pandemic has also highlighted and intensified the deep racial divides that exist in health care. Black, Hispanic, and Native Wisconsinites have gotten sick at disproportionate rates during the pandemic. Just as a wave of protesters raised their voices against racial injustice this summer, the pandemic shed light on how inequality could become a matter of life and death.

Plus, as scientists and public health officials worked to fight off COVID-19, an “infodemic” posed its own threat. Misinformation and conspiracy theories about the pandemic — from masks to vaccines to the origins of the virus — have all run rampant online this past year, and sometimes led people to put themselves or others at risk. Figuring out how to share good science and take the politics out of preventive measures will be key to the future of public health, said Simanek, who helped found the website Dear Pandemic to answer COVID-19 questions…

@DearPandemic: Meet the women answering burning questions big and small about COVID-19

Images of two coronaviruses. Balls with spiky protrusions.

By Jillian Kramer
National Geographic
March 10, 2021

When her father-in-law was diagnosed last July with terminal lung cancer, Wisconsin native Terri Watermolen began to plan for the inevitable funeral that would take place during the coronavirus pandemic. Unsure how her family could safely and responsibly mourn a loved one, Watermolen turned to trusted sources of information: the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dear Pandemic.

“I knew Those Nerdy Girls would help,” she says.

Those Nerdy Girls, as they call themselves, are the women scientists, scholars, and clinicians who have made it their mission to answer people’s burning questions about the pandemic.

Launched on March 10, 2020—a day before the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic—the group of volunteer experts has become a valuable resource for thousands of followers who turn to its website and social media channels every day for reliable COVID-19 information. On Dear Pandemic’s pages, Watermolen found sage, straightforward information that ultimately helped her plan a short, socially distanced burial.

Most of their followers are women, a demographic that has been disproportionally affected over the past year by lockdowns, layoffs, and other disruptions. A September 2020 McKinsey report shows that mothers are more than three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for housework and caregiving during the pandemic. Women have lost more jobs than men in the last year. At the same time, women remain over-represented in essential jobs such as health care and grocery store checkouts, more often putting them on the front lines.

On top of all that, women are often their family’s information seekers, says Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University who studies gender inequality. This additional work “comes with tremendous costs to individual women themselves,” Cooper says. Though studies on the emotional and mental-health toll of the pandemic remains scarce, some early research suggests women have suffered more psychiatric disorders than men during the pandemic, including depression, anxiety, loneliness, and insomnia. Polls suggest women are more likely to worry about both the health and economic effects of the pandemic on their families than men, too.