From a profile in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most important people in health in 2024:
(W)hen most public officials have stopped talking about Covid-19, Katelyn Jetelina’s free newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist, remains one of the most consistent and accessible sources of information about the virus. About 280,000 people in 100 countries subscribe to her weekly dispatches, which have expanded to address public-health topics like mental health and gun violence.
“My biggest passion is teaching,” says Jetelina, who left her position at UT in 2022 and is now a scientific-communications consultant to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I’m teaching a course through my newsletter about what public health is and is not and how messy and complex it is.”
With summer fast approaching, we thought it would be a good idea to get a public health “weather forecast”. So we did the smart thing. We talked to Katelyn Jetelina.
Katelyn Jetelina podcast. To listen, click on the arrow to the right of 46:44.
P.S. One astonishing (and thoroughly depressing) fact about Katelyn’s work as a public health specialist/educator: She left Texas and relocated to California because of threats to herself and her family (she is married and has two young daughters).