Infectious Diseases Epidemiology and Global Public Health

Full course description

SCI2042 is a hybrid course that combines the fields of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Global Public Health to look into infectious diseases that have caused pandemics in the past decades. The topics that will be discussed in Infectious Disease Epidemiology are, for example, history of infectious diseases, basic epidemiological concepts and terminology, descriptive epidemiology, the epidemiologic triad model, and vaccine efficacy and effectiveness. To provide students with a comprehensive understanding of infectious diseases, this course will also bring into the knowledge in the field of Global Public Health. The topics that will be discussed are, for example, social and political determinants of health, public health policies, laws and ethics, international cooperation in health emergencies, and also the One Health concept. The hybrid nature of the course will be realized when we look into three viruses that have caused major zoonotic/infectious disease outbreaks, which are retroviruses (i.e., HIV/AIDS), influenza viruses (i.e., H5N1, H1N1, H7N9), and coronaviruses (i.e., SARS, MERS, COVID-19). The global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will be explored in the third part of the course. Factors affecting antibiotic use, both on macro and micro levels, will be discussed and analyzed. We will wrap up the course by highlighting the “One Health” concept (i.e., human-animal-environment interfaces) in responding to zoonotic diseases and AMR threats, both now and in the future.