What can COVID teach us about responding to gun violence, climate change?

No one saw COVID coming in the winter of 2019-2020.

How do we prepare for the next pandemic?

“We need to wake up and learn from the last 2 ½ years and confront the tough questions that gave us all a little bit of angst,” said Dr. Michael Mendoza, commissioner of the Monroe County Department of Public Health.  

Dr. Mendoza said we may already be into the next pandemic. In the final episode of my three-part conversation with Dr. Mendoza, he talks about applying the lessons of COVID to guiding communities through the pandemics of gun violence and social disparity and inequity. Climate change, he said, also will have an effect on people depending on their economic status.

Dr. Bill Valenti, left, and Monroe County Commissioner of Public Health Dr. Michael Mendoza talk about preparing for the next pandemic. Credit: Matt Wittmeyer, Matt Wittmeyer Photography

“If we don't find a way to learn from the last 2 ½ years, it will have been the greatest missed opportunity of our generation,” he said.

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In previous episodes, Dr. Mendoza talked about how his experience in caring for people with HIV/AIDS still influences his approach and how public health officials really are coaches in the way the deliver the message about prevention and treatment.