Name: How tech companies can help combat the pandemic and reshape public health | Karen DeSalvo
Uploaded: 2020-07-03T04:20:03.000Z
Duration: 24 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Whitney Pennington Rodgers: Before we really dive in

Adverbs of manner

to talking specifically about Google's work

let's first set up the relationship between public health and tech.

they hear "Google," and they think of this big tech company.

why does Google have a chief health officer?

So could you talk a little bit about your work

Karen DeSalvo: Yeah. Well, maybe I'm the embodiment

of public health and tech coming together.

My background is, I practiced medicine for 20 years,

though a part of my work has always been in public health.

In fact, my first job, putting myself through college,

was working at the state laboratory in Massachusetts.

As the story will go with Joia [Mukherjee] we're reconnected again,

And I, across the journey of the work that I was doing

and the right care and meet them where they were medically,

that I did when I was the Health Commissioner in New Orleans

and later when I had other roles in public health practice,

that really is about thinking of people and community

in the context in which they live and how we provide the best information,

the best services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate,

And when the opportunity arose to join the team at Google,

because one of the things that I have learned across my journey

is that having the right information at the right time

can make all the difference in the world.

And billions of people come to Google every day

and so it is a tremendous opportunity to have that right information

so that they can have the right information,

so that they can participate in their own health,

but also, in the context of this historic pandemic,

be a part of the broader health of the community,

whether it's to flatten the curve or keep the curve flat as we go forward.

WPR: And so it sounds like that there is this connection, then,

between public health and what Google's work is

in thinking about public education and providing information.

And so could you talk a little bit about that link

between public health and public education and Google?

You know, the essential public health services

and these are two areas where tech in general, but certainly Google,

has an opportunity to partner with the public health system

and with the public for their health more broadly.

You know, going back to the earlier days of this pandemic,

Google first leaned in to start to put information out to the public

about how to find resources in their local community,

from the CDC or from other authoritative resources.

So on the search page, we put up "knowledge panels,"

which is something we've done for other crises,

we wanted to be certain that when people went on to search,

that there was authoritative information,

which is always there but certainly very prominently displayed,

and do that in partnership with public health authorities.

So we began our journey really very much in an information way

of making certain that people knew how to get the right information

I think the journey for us over the course of the last few months

has been to continue to lean in on how we provide information

in partnership with public health authorities in local areas,

directing people in a certain state to their state's health department,

helping people get information about testing.

a suite of resources that we wanted to provide to the health care community,

whether that was for health care providers that may not have access to PPE,

we did a partnership with the CDC Foundation.

and the opportunity for us to partner with public health

around things like helping public health understand if their blunt policies

around social distancing to flatten the curve

were actually having an impact on behavior in the community.

We were asked by public health agencies all across the world,

including some of my colleagues here in the US,

could we help them have a better evidence-based way to understand

the policies around social distancing or shelter in place?

Which I think we'll talk about more later.

In addition to that sort of work, also been working to support public health

in this really essential work they're doing for contact tracing,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How tech companies can help combat the pandemic and reshape public health | Karen DeSalvo

vulnerable

sort

essential

context