Reopening college campuses has been particularly challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Regenstrief Vice President for Faculty Development Aaron Carroll, M.D., has guided Indiana University’s return, serving as the director of surveillance and mitigation for COVID-19.
IU’s multi-tiered testing program is the cornerstone of the university’s plan to allow in-person instruction and on-campus living while minimizing the spread of the virus. Faculty, staff, and on-campus students were tested when they arrived to campus, and ongoing testing continues to monitor the spread. Dr. Carroll helped develop the program.
The mitigation testing will quickly identify emerging clusters of cases and allow people who test positive to isolate before they have a chance to infect others. The testing will cover thousands of people every week across all nine IU campuses. Dr. Carroll believes this level of screening is the best tool to keep an outbreak at bay.
Dr. Carroll has been a strong proponent of robust testing to mitigate the spread of the virus since early in the pandemic. He has written several opinion pieces in the New York Times and appeared on many national news networks to discuss the importance of testing.
In addition to being the vice president of faculty development at Regenstrief Institute, Dr. Carroll is also a professor of pediatrics, vice chair of health outcomes research faculty development and the associate dean of research mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine.
