As school districts figure out what they’ll do come fall, Alex Navarro has a sense of what, exactly, the planning discussions between administrators and public health officials might look like.
Navarro, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, has studied how school closures affected previous pandemics in the U.S. When looking back at the 1918 influenza pandemic, he and his colleagues found that mass school closures were one of the most helpful strategies for reducing local caseloads.
Navarro also spent part of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic learning how communities coped with CDC school closure guidance. The health authority vacillated between recommending schools close for seven, then 14, and then back to seven days if they diagnosed a student with H1N1. In the spring of 2009, more than 1,300 schools closed temporarily because of these guidelines. The back and forth in CDC closure advice had some parents, officials and media questioning the recommendations.
Some of those same factors Navarro has seen play out before are cropping up again with the coronavirus. To understand where current uncertainties came from — and what might happen if school districts are divided on the best way to educate kids this fall — Discover spoke with Navarro.
Q: What inspired you to research the response to school closings during the H1N1 outbreak?
