Mark Johnson

In 2017, Mark Johnson and a team of Marquette students and journalists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel produced in-depth stories on the threat of pandemics involving diseases that jump from animals to humans.

The multifaceted series, “Outbreak,” found that our own choices are increasing the threat that once-distant diseases will spread to developed nations.

Through their roles in climate change, clearing of forests and globalization humans are driving the rise of diseases that pass from animals to us. Our next choice -- how to respond -- is fraught with ethical, moral and political concerns.

Marquette student journalists McKenna Oxenden, Devi Shastri and Ryan Patterson earned bylines on “Outbreak” stories.

More than 170 people attended a Nov. 9, 2017 event at Marquette at which the journalists on “Outbreak” discussed the series. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jonathan Patz of the UW-Madison Global Health Institute addressed the role of climate change in the spread of disease.

 

Works published to date:

March 2017
Animal to Man: Fear of the Next Pandemic

Infectious disease collides with changing climate

July 2017
Pathway to Peril

October 2017
Man vs. Mosquito

Mosquito Battle Gets Political

November 2017
“Can Math be Used to Predict an Outbreak?”