Making Infection Knowledge Usable
2026-09-26
The usual public-health script is too bloodless. Alex Sundermann, Dr.P.H., an assistant professor in epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, argues through his work that infectious disease knowledge must feel close enough to touch. Facts alone rarely move behavior; a story, by contrast, can turn an abstract exposure into a decision about testing, isolation, vaccination, or care.
That is more than outreach. Infection control often fails where clinical language meets ordinary fear, because people must judge symptoms, exposure, and uncertainty before a clinician can intervene. Sundermann's emphasis on relatability treats risk communication not as decoration but as part of prevention: when transmission dynamics are explained through recognizable lives, warnings have a better chance of becoming action. The distance is small. Its effects are not.
The harder lesson is institutional. Public health can produce strong surveillance and still lose the argument if its findings arrive as detached instructions. Stories are not substitutes for evidence, nor should they blur uncertainty. They can connect evidence to choice, including choices around treatment and antimicrobial resistance. In the quiet interval between a warning and a choice, comprehension either reaches the person or remains on the page.
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