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Can we teach our children how to avoid a future pandemic?

One local health expert says public health education should be added in our schools.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Is health class enough for children to learn about the causes of a pandemic or an endemic and how we can avoid it? One local health expert says no.

3NEWS talked with Assistant Director of the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District, Dr. Dante Gonzalez, who says it's tough for parents to teach their children something that can be difficult for those parents to understand.

According to Gonzalez, it took months at the start of the pandemic for many people to learn to wear face masks to avoid catching or spreading COVID-19. Children in public schools were even less likely to understand how a mask could keep them from getting sick. 

"I think public health needs to be taught at a much earlier age rather than you waiting to go to college to learn some of this very basic concepts," Gonzalez said. "If we go back in history and we look to see the very first documented, or one of the very first documented, cases of public health was clean water. Trying to figure out why certain individuals were getting sick and why other ones were not getting sick was the basis of public health."

He believes that teaching kids about communal or public health in addition to existing health classes can help kids and society avoid the next possible pandemic or public health emergency.

Gonzalez says whether that means hiring more teachers or expanding the curriculum for current teachers, to include public health concepts in schools may require action from the state education agency.

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