The endowed Amanda Gill Memorial Fund was established to provide further research or educational opportunities to students studying public health, specifically in the area of infectious disease, which Amanda was passionate about.

USF College of Public Health alumna Amanda Gill had a heart for helping others.

A graduate of the first BSPH class in 2011, her parents said Amanda had a passion for working with people with infectious diseases and always said she wanted to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or in Africa to help AIDS patients.

Amanda was born in September of 1988 in Clearwater, Fla. She spent the majority of her education at Northside Christian School before transferring to Clearwater Hight School, where she graduated.

While attending USF, Gill worked at Busch Gardens and was awarded the Employee of the Year award. But being a big sister was her true badge of honor. “She was a fierce protector of her younger brother, Matthew, who also ended up attending USF, and always had his back,” Amanda’s father, Jim, said.

Always on the go, her family said she was involved in many activities in her free time and was a light to others. She loved adventure, her dog, Oakley, and had a heart to help. “She wanted to help people more than anything,” her mother Denice said. “When she smiled, everybody smiled.”

After graduating the COPH, Amanda’s  career path lead her across many different cities in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. From food safety for local restaurants to the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center, Amanda’s parents said that each role could be linked back to her interest and experience in public health.

One role even led her right to the front lines of COVID at a drive-thru testing center.

In her most recent role, Amanda worked as an Infection Preventionist at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta.

“She wanted to do the best and go above and beyond,” said Shalom Patel, infection prevention manager of operations at Piedmont Healthcare with whom Amanda worked. “Amanda was fun and very bright, and she had an infectious smile. She was one of my most enthusiastic employees who was always very open and honest with me, which I appreciated. She was a team player and went out of her way to help other people. Acceptance overall was really important to Amanda.”

During her time at Piedmont, Patel said a big part of Amanda’s role was collaborating closely with the engineering department. She also worked with the MRSA-prevention team and infection prevention in the cardiac critical care unit areas.

Patel also noted that Amanda was a natural leader and mentor who took new employees under her wing.

“When she moved to Atlanta to work at Piedmont, she was very happy,” Patel said. “Amanda said this was the type of work she wanted the whole time. In infection prevention, she got to be the ‘boots on the ground,’ I think she was in the right place.”

In 35 years, Amanda lived a full life and was invested in helping so many others. “She was a shining light in all of our lives,” Denice Gill said.

A Celebration of Life was held Monday, Oct. 30, 2023, at Central Christian Church in St. Petersburg, Fla. Live Stream Link: https://boxcast.tv/view/amanda-gill-memorial-service-3p-vnovk1edkyfq3jnemasb

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that you please consider donating to the Amanda Gill Memorial Fund #540045 at the University of South Florida.

Donations may be mailed to: USF Foundation, Inc., 4202 E. Fowler Ave., ALC 100, Tampa, FL 33620 (ATTN: Beth Ahmedic, USF Health); memo line: Fund #540045 Amanda Gill Memorial Fund

Story by: Liz Bannon, College of Public Health

The post In remembrance of Amanda Gill appeared first on College of Public Health News.

USF Health experts and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor participated in a COVID-19 roundtable discussion leaving no topic unturned.

The COVID-19 Town Hall, which was held virtually and broadcast from Busch Gardens Tampa Bay on Thursday, Oct. 15, was hosted by the USF College of Public Health (COPH) and The Big Biology podcast.

Moderated by COPH disease ecology expert Dr. Lynn “Marty” Martin and Dr. Art Woods, a biology professor from the University of Montana—who both host the Big Biology podcast—panelists were asked a series of questions to provide viewers with more insight on COVID-19, ranging from the medical to economic implications. 

Panelists included:

• The Honorable Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa
• Kami Kim, MD, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine professor of internal medicine concentrating in infectious diseases and international medicine
• Edwin Michael, PhD, USF College of Public Health professor specializing in epidemiology and population ecology of disease transmission
• Michael Teng, PhD, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine associate professor and expert in immunology and vaccine development

“This live event was a chance to cover the many aspects of COVID—medical, public health, policy and economics—that people care about in a casual format, conducive to understanding and enabling direct input from the audience in the form of Q&A,” said Martin, who said he started the Big Biology podcast in an attempt to help clearly communicate with the public on research they otherwise would not ordinally access or even understand readily. “I was very happy with how the live event came off…and have heard a lot of praise from many colleagues and friends. Whether it was beneficial is for others to say, but we hit the mark we hoped for.”

“COVID is very unpredictable and many of the things we thought we knew don’t necessarily apply to COVID. With that being said, we’ve learned a lot. So right now, there are treatments that do help patients,” Kim said when asked about the increased mortality rates in the U.S. when compared to other countries. “We do have treatments that look very promising, and now we understand the disease better so we’re better at managing it.” 

Teng said it is still hard to tell when the average person will have access to a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I wish I knew, but I think one of the things I’ve been really impressed with is the response to this virus,” he said. “It’s been amazing to see how quickly some of these products have been making it into clinical trials. We may have a vaccine that could be deployed next year, which is amazingly fast.”

He also added that while there have been pauses in the trials process due to unexplained illnesses, he’s still optimistic.

“There are so many good candidates out there. I know we’ve heard in the press that there has been some pauses in the clinical trials, these are sort of natural pauses when there are unexplained illnesses within the study population, when you have a study population of 30-60,000 people, it’s not unusual to find one or two unexplained illnesses,” he said. “I’m pretty optimistic, I think by the end of this year we will find a vaccine that has some promise of being a first line vaccine. Certainly, by next year we will have something that can be deployed into the public.”

According to Teng, the much bigger question is who will get the vaccine first.

“If you’re young and healthy, you’re probably not getting this vaccine until 2022 maybe, but if you’re in a high-risk group probably next year some time,” he said.

When asked of the possibility for increased stay at home restrictions over the winter for the public, Castor said it will all depend on the science. 

“We are taking it as the science goes, and we have had great adherence to our mask order, great adherence to our safer at home restrictions as well, we closed down quickly in our community and reopened very thoughtfully based on the science,” she said. “We will do what is necessary to keep our community safe, but [we are] clearly hoping we don’t have to go past those steps of wearing a mask, social distancing, and ensuring that if you are in any of those [in the higher risk categories] including the elderly and comorbidities, that you are staying at home and keeping yourself away from others. We will continue to travel that path and hopefully we can continue to recover economically, and we aren’t going to see the incredible spike we saw back in July.

Michael said he anticipates not seeing COVID-19 get close to slowing down until March of 2021.  

“It’s not going to go away,” he said. “COVID is going to join influenza and circulate globally and that’s especially the case if the immunity is not permanent; new births will occur and people will move and that will keep the system oscillating.”

He said we’ll have to get comfortable with the idea of COVID sticking around.

“Once the vaccines do come, you’ll have a booster system, so for me it’s just waiting until the vaccines come into play. Flu is part of our life and that is how it is going to be with COVID,” he said.  

The public is invited to watch the town hall via the USF College of Public Health Facebook page.

It will also be available on the Big Biology podcast on November 25, 2020.  You can download Big Biology from www.bigbiology.org or anywhere one gets podcasts.

“One amazing thing about biology right now is just how much is happening on all fronts,” Woods said. “Marty and I say to each other, and we really believe, that biology is in a golden age – with more exciting findings appearing now than ever before. Doing the podcast gives us a chance to interface with the people who are making those discoveries happen – incredibly exciting. The live events also add another element to this, because they can focus on breaking news that’s happening even before the scientific publishing process catches up.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post COVID-19 Town Hall reveals what to expect in the months ahead appeared first on College of Public Health News.