Understanding the Causes and Spread of Human Disease: Global Health Epidemiology

Catalog description

How do we identify the causes and spread of diseases, such as Covid, Zika or Ebola? How do we estimate the effects of social, behavioral, environmental and biological factors, on the risk of disease? In this highly participatory, team-based course, students will learn how to answer these questions using concepts and methods from the field of epidemiology. Each week we will tackle a distinct global health problem by reading relevant popular press and scientific articles, with supplemental reading in our textbook. We will then complete team-based exercises to study these global health issues, including how to conduct an outbreak investigation, how to perform disease surveillance, and how to design studies to identify disease risk factors.