College of Public Health to host webinar on COVID-19 vaccines

JOHNSON CITY (Feb. 5, 2021)  – As the nation moves through the vaccination phases of the coronavirus pandemic, East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health is hosting a second installment of its popular “Coronavirus: Separating Fact from Fiction” webinar. This installment will focus solely on issues and questions related to the COVID-19 vaccines.

The webinar, which is part of the college’s Leading Voices in Public Health lecture series, will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 23, from 6-7:30 p.m. It will feature a presentation and question and answer session featuring three experts on infectious diseases and public health. It is free and open to the public.

The moderator of the event, Dr. Randy Wykoff, dean of the ETSU College of Public Health, will be joined by Dr. Michelle D. Fiscus, medical director of the Tennessee Department of Health’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program; Dr. Jonathan Moorman, vice chair of research and scholarship, professor and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine; and Dr. David Kirschke, medical director at Northeast Regional Health Office, Tennessee Department of Health.

“With the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines, we have heard a lot of questions, ranging from topics related to the vaccine’s availability, efficacy, side effects and impact on other public health measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing,” Wykoff said. “By bringing experts together to address some of these questions, we hope to shed light on the science and the importance of the vaccines.”

The webinar will consist of three short presentations, with the majority of the time being focused on answering audience questions.

Questions can be submitted at registration (Free Registration Link) or in advance to Janet Stork at storkj@etsu.edu. In addition, audience members may submit questions in the chat function during the webinar.