Although the coronavirus has shut down college campuses across the nation, it’s not stopping Nazareth College from hosting its Public Health Week virtually.

“So every year in April, usually it’s around the first week, we participate in National Public Health Week,” said Dr. Mary Maher, nursing department chair & public health program director at Nazareth College.

While the Nazareth campus is mostly empty, the week is still happening amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re not sitting in the classroom anymore, so we’re really forced to do things to help our community and really get the word out, and we’re using marketing and all of that stuff I think will benefit someone in any career, and it’s just really interesting to see how everything we talked about in class is coming together in this time,” said Carey Sheldon, a senior in public health at Nazareth College.

The week has a major purpose getting students to work together, sharing important information to the community, and recruiting for the public health major.

Along with the conference carrying on, students have also continued their course work and capstone projects virtually.

Maria Rodriguez, a senior in public health at Nazareth College, said, “It was very important how we brought like all of the different topics that were happening with COVID-19 and we were able to work in groups… now we’re going to be exposing all of this information we have been working on.”

Organizers see this as a perfect time to highlight the major and important public health information.

Dr. Maher added, “As this current pandemic has indicated, a lot more people need to know a lot more about public health.”

Public Health Week at Nazareth will wrap up Thursday, but the public can use Zoom to attend the event virtually.