Investigating Epidemics like COVID-19: An Analyst's Guide

Course Overview

Do you want to learn how to detect, identify the cause, and decrease the morbidity and mortality from outbreaks or pandemics like COVID-19? Are you considering a career in public health practice, but aren’t sure how health departments collect and use outbreak data? Are you working in public health, but interested in moving into analytical and/or technical roles or curious how health departments investigate outbreaks? If so, this course is for you. After taking this course you be able to define key terms related to outbreaks and describe how surveillance data are collected and analyzed to detect outbreaks. You will be able to create epidemic curves and draw conclusions about transmission and cause from the shape of the curve and median incubation period. You will be able to describe the steps to investigating outbreaks and use that knowledge to guide an outbreak investigation. Using statistical software or excel, you will be able to identify demographic and geographic disparities and key exposures, and to calculate secondary attack rates. You will be able to quantify associations between health outcomes and key exposures using odds ratios and confidence intervals and to interpret and use findings to inform public health responses.