Epidemiology and Food Safety

Catalog description

This course provides students with an introduction to epidemiologic methods used in foodborne disease outbreak investigation. Emphasis is put on the importance of surveillance in detecting various types of foodborne disease (e.g. bacteria, virus, parasite, etc.). In particular, students learn systematic approaches for collecting and analyzing data on the distribution of foodborne illness to identify the points of contamination and causes of foodborne disease. Both epidemiologic methods and molecular methods are presented to identify the causes of foodborne disease outbreaks. Finally, students evaluate the effectiveness of foodborne disease outbreak investigations using various case studies.