C19C Student Feature: John Grady Heller

The COVID-19 Committee (C19C) is a student-led committee that recruits and connects OUHSC students to COVID-19 projects and initiatives happening on campus. The C19C also recognizes student involvement in the fight to end the pandemic.

John Grady Heller, a PhD candidate in Epidemiology, currently works at the CDC Foundation attached to OSDH as a COVID-19 emergency relief epidemiologist and data analyst in acute disease service's surveillance program. There, he analyzed state surveillance data in order to provide daily case counts, and other surveillance reports, as well as worked to streamline disease reporting and improve analysis efforts at OSDH. If you've seen the daily numbers recently, those actually came from him! As a student, he also helped organize and coordinate the Oklahoma branch of the Systematic Observation of Masking and Distancing (SOMAD), where they collected observational data in collaboration with an international research group headed by the Kaiser Permanente health system. These efforts were aimed at understanding how people in different areas reacted to risk, public health suggestions, and mandates concerning health behaviors such as mask wearing and physical distancing.

If you are a student who has been (or is) involved in the fight to end the pandemic, please connect with the C19C at https://bit.ly/3sFuR8z to have your contributions recognized.