Dr. Amna Tariq

What is your favorite public health experience and why?

“I love being able to inform the public health policies specially those pertaining to the infectious diseases and their spread (e.g: flu or COVID-19 ). Working in infectious disease epidemiology allows me to understand the infectious disease transmission and inform public health actions that can help decline the disease incidence and improve people’e health at large.”

What is your proudest public health moment and why?

“During the COVID-19 pandemic I was the primary person performing COVID-19 modeling to predict the SARS-CoV-2 trajectory in Chile as well as trying to understand its transmission dynamics. The results of my modeling were relayed to the president of Chile on a regular basis and he made his decisions to implement the public health measures such as the implementation of lockdowns in the country based on the results produced by my modeling efforts and I still stand proud of it.”

Why do you care about public health?

“To me public health is a right of all individuals belonging to any strata of the community and providing resources and possibilities to elevate public health, inform policies and decisions regarding the public health allows me to play my part in making a difference in people’s lives.”

What is your public health story?

“I started my public health journey in Pakistan when I got involved in research related to the barriers in seeking dental treatment. However I quickly realized that underrepresented sectors of the society lack basic health resources. I was also able to observe a great amount of health inequity among the population that motivated me to take a deeper dive in public health with the goals of making health resources attainable and available for all. Since then, there has been no looking back and I ended up specializing in infectious diseases epidemiology (PhD) working on COVID, Ebola, dengue, Chikungunya, etc. Currently I work with Stanford School of Medicine and am trying to understand the spread of dengue and Chikungunya in Kenya.”