Dr. Kavita Patel, Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Practicing Primary Care Physician on How Healthcare Can Help to Reopen Schools Safely
Kavita Patel, MD, MPH joins Senator Frist for a compelling, timely discussion on reopening our nations schools in the midst of a pandemic. Together, they delve into the challenges she’s hearing from teachers, what she’s advising school leaders on reopening, what to expect on vaccines, and the latest COVID-inspired innovations.
Dr. Patel shares that, “The K-12 conundrum is we’re asking people to assume risk of different levels without understanding what the calculator is… Asking educators to look at CDC guidance without having anybody with public health experience in their vicinity, it’s a recipe for disaster, because they don’t understand what they are reading. Just like you and I wouldn’t understand how to read an educational handbook on how to teach my children math.”
She also emphasizes the importance of masking, something the latest data on the declining number of new daily COVID-19 cases is attributable to: “The highest protection you can have is to have everybody wear a mask because the data [we have] now, there is no question, that masking [has] a much larger factor in decreasing transmission.”
Dr. Patel is a Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a practicing primary care physician in Washington, DC. She previously served in the Obama Administration as a senior aide to Valerie Jarrett, where she played a critical role in health reform, financial regulatory reform, and economic recovery policies. Dr. Patel also has a deep understanding of Capitol Hill from her time spent on the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s staff as deputy staff director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Senator Frist and Dr. Patel have worked together for years, including at the Bipartisan Policy Center and The Aspen Group, and she always has her finger on the pulse when it comes to the latest on healthcare policy.
Click here to listen to this week’s episode and hear more from Dr. Kavita Patel on how healthcare can help reopen our schools safely.
This episode is brought to you by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. Blue Shield companies are supporting health care partners on the frontline of this unprecedented fight. Ensuring patients don’t have to worry about costs. Caring when it counts the most, for the Health of America.
