As a global health minor, I have spent the past year completing my global health immersion experience as a COVID-19 contact tracer in Butler County. In conjunction with my experience, I have worked alongside Dr. M. Cameron Hay and Dr. Paul Flaspohler to take further steps to explore childhood wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic and address potential sources of parental worry. A large portion of our contact tracing is in direct cooperation with parents of children enrolled in schools within Butler County. When we call them to discuss their child’s COVID-19 diagnosis, they are immediately concerned that their children will have to miss school again. With the quarantine and isolation orders throughout the pandemic, schools in the Butler County area were forced to switch to a learning-from-home model. With the very quick manner in which this switch occurred, not much was done to protect children’s social and mental wellbeing. Without ignoring the physical health consequences and loss of life caused by COVID-19 in children, we must develop a more holistic understanding of childhood wellbeing throughout the pandemic. The absence of face-to-face interpersonal communication between young students and their peers may have harmed the capacity for school to foster self-efficacy, respect, empathy, responsibility, and relationship-building in children. As a result, many children have experienced difficulty developing appropriate social skills, and coping with mental health challenges. Going forward, we need to be able to confront this problem head-on, if it were to present itself again. In doing so, we need to develop concrete plans to address social and mental wellbeing in children, before we are faced with another global health crisis.
Author: Julia Mumper
Advisors: M. Cameron Hay, Anthropology. Paul Flaspohler, Psychology
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