About the Course

The world is facing a new era of emerging infectious diseases (e.g., SARS-CoV-2) that can threaten human health due to their complexity and devastating impact on society and the socio-economic development of each country. This pandemic has highlighted the importance of training human resources in health, detecting, monitoring, and treating positive cases of COVID-19, and transmitting to the population the importance of compliance with mitigation and containment measures recommended at the local, regional, and global levels.

In this sense, this course targets professionals involved in public health, primary care, and students from related disciplines to provide basic knowledge of the disease outbreak investigation process, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. This way, participants will have a theoretical basis for contribution in outbreak management in their context.
The course contents are developed through a case-based problem, organized in four chapters called "weeks" and a final assignment. And of course, you will familiarize yourself with the basic steps for outbreak investigation, starting from outbreak identification and confirmation to control measures and risk communication with the population.

Content and Requirements

The course content is developed using a case-based problem divided into two main chapters: 1) Introduction to Outbreak Investigation and 2) Infection Prevention and Control in Acute Respiratory Infections for Health Workers in Low and Middle-Income Countries. It is 8 weeks long, with each week containing one unit of interactive video content, mandatory lectures, activities, quizzes, assessments, and the requirements listed at the beginning of each unit.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the course, the participants will be able to:

• define the concepts and characteristics of disease outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic;
• recognize the main differences to determina a possible, probable or confirmed case in an outbreak;
• identify the characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of the main epidemiological study designs to investigate an outbreak;
• recognize the objectives of containment and mitigation measures in outbreak response;
• identify key elements for effective risk communication for outbreak response.

Target Group

The course is designed for professionals, Master and PhD students in medicine, health sciences, public health, epidemiology, and other related fields, who are interested in disease management and infection prevention and control.

Learning Concept

Online, with asynchronous sessions, using Moodle plaform.

Duration, Credits, Schedule and Dates

The module lasts 8 weeks, and is designed for 90 working hours, including 30h working with online material and meetings and around 60h of self-study and project work. The course offers 3 ECTS (needs to be approved by the student's home institution). The next course dates are from January 13 to March 7, 2025.

Language

The Introduction to Disease Outbreak Investigation Course is offered in English.

Registration

Registration is now open. Click here to register for this course before December 16, 2024.

Contact

For more information, please contact solis.teresa@usfx.bo.