Epidemiology Surge Capacity

During an infectious disease epidemic or other large-scale disaster, rational decisions must be based on sound information. For example, good quality epidemiologic data are needed to assess the scale of the public health problem and to evaluate the success of control measures.  

During a large-scale event, there will likely be a shortage of trained epidemiologists. To provide necessary epidemic surge capacity, the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness has worked with the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health and the Connecticut Department of Public Health to develop a workshop called Building Surge Epidemiology Capacity: Epidemiologic Data Collection Training for Non-epidemiologist. This workshop is intended to train non-epidemiologists working in local health departments to collect quality interview, contact tracing and chart review data, thus freeing trained epidemiologist to focus on study design, data analysis and interpretation.

By the end of the workshop the learner will be able to:

1. Describe the role of epidemiology support personnel
2. List the ways that infections may be spread from person-to-person
3. Define the term case definition and describe its importance for good quality epidemiologic data collection
4. Describe interviewing techniques used to collect good quality epidemiology interview data
5. List challenges interviewers face and describe methods for dealing with them
6. Locate standard information in a medical chart
7. Describe the purpose of and steps in a contact investigation interview

You may download the workshop materials here.

Questions?

If you have questions about this training, please contact Amanda Durante.