Mobilizing Non-Traditional Public Health Partners to Mitigate the Effects of Coronavirus Infection and to Reduce the Risk of Emerging Disease

Partnerships are a cornerstone of modern public health practice, yet in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many traditional public health partners either floundered or lacked the resources to perform adequately. The public health community should begin looking at alternative pathways to fulfilling public health needs when traditional partners are not available. One such partner that has historically been overlooked in providing Public Health support, especially with interventional epidemiology and public health policy, is the advanced materials (AM) community. The AM community could play a larger role in public health practice by developing and implementing preventive measures for disease, including for global pandemics such as COVID-19. One such example of how this partnership could work is the Advanced Material Pandemic and Future Preparedness Taskforce (AMPT), which is an international public-benefit initiative focused on using advanced materials to help solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. As an international cooperative platform, the multidisciplinary taskforce is building a global infrastructure and an ecosystem network that enables the advanced material community to respond swiftly and effectively under the umbrella of future preparedness. Advanced materials have played and will continue to play some role in public health, including for use in diagnostic tests, antimicrobial coatings, and filtering facepiece respirators. Technology has advanced to a point where researchers and the manufacturers of advanced materials now have a clear direction and resources to be the partners that the public health community can no longer afford to overlook, especially in times of crisis, when new ways of thinking are required to solve pressing challenges.