Dear School of Public Health Community,

To follow up on the email sent to our full Brown community on Friday afternoon, we wanted to reach out to reiterate some important information as well as give an update on the current state of the pandemic as we approach our upcoming Commencement weekend.

As we have been seeing, case counts in Rhode Island are rapidly increasing. Additionally, although vaccination and boosting continue to provide tremendous protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death, the new variants are causing increasing numbers of breakthrough symptomatic infections.

We want to take this opportunity to remind the SPH community that the best way to prevent symptomatic infection is multi-layered protection - not just vaccination, but also masking, ventilation, and rapid testing.

Although the official Brown policy is that mask-wearing is optional, given our high rates of vaccination and boosters, we do want to remind everyone that a key aspect of these policies is respecting the boundaries of our colleagues. Any meetings in which the host requires attendees to wear masks, for example, should be complied with and respected.

Additional information from RIDOH can be found on their website, and the CDC’s full set of recommendations is available on their website. Further details are also outlined on the Healthy Brown website.

Most importantly, as always, in accordance with principles of public health, we encourage our community to take care of each other - we are stronger and healthier together!

Sincerely,

Ronald Aubert, Ph.D., MSPH
Interim Dean

Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH
Academic Dean

Sara Walsh
Executive Dean of Finance & Administration