Academic Courses
FALL 2008
APPLIED EPIDEMIOLOGY USING R
Public Health 251D, CCN 76200, 2 units
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH
Course Description: This is an intensive, one-semester introduction to the R programming language for applied epidemiology. R is a freely available, multi-platform (Mac OS, Linux, and Windows, etc.), versatile, and powerful program for statistical computing and graphics (http://www.r-project.org). This course will focus on core basics of organizing, managing, and manipulating epidemiologic data; basic epidemiologic applications; introduction to R programming; and basic R graphics.
Course Format: Lecture and computer demonstration. You are welcome to bring your laptop with R pre-installed.
Target Audience: This course is intended for epidemiologists, medical epidemiologists, data analysts, and demographers that want an introduction to the R language.
Prerequisites: Completion of one semester of epidemiology and one semester of biostatistics.
Schedule: Tuesdays, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm, starting September 2, 2008 till December 4, 2008.
Location: 2311 Tolman Hall; UC Berkeley Campus
Course Syllabus: Click Here
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 251D, CCN 76200. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact Jeannie Balido at jybalido@idready.org.
For More Information: Call 510-643-4935 or send email to aragon@berkeley.edu.
Public Health Preparedness & Emergency Response
Public Health 257B, CCN 76219, 2 units
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH
Course Description: This one semester course is an intensive introduction to public health emergency preparedness and response, and covers the following topic areas: the role of public health in disasters, natural disasters and severe weather, intentional mass threats (CBRNE), detecting and monitoring public health threats, post-disaster sampling, surveys, and rapid needs assessments, public health emergency incident management system, emergency operations planning and exercises, infectious disease emergency readiness, environmental health emergency readiness, mental health emergency readiness, special needs and vulnerable populations, essentials of public health leadership during a disaster, essentials of crisis risk communication, essentials of investigating outbreaks, disaster medicine and mass casualty care, and personal and community disaster preparedness.
Course Format: Lecture
Schedule: Tuesdays, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, starting September 2, 2008 till December 4, 2008.
Location: 2304 Tolman Hall; UC Berkeley Campus
Course Syllabus: Click Here
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 257B. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact Jeannie Balido at jybalido@idready.org.
For More Information: Call 510-643-4935 or send email to aragon@berkeley.edu.
SUMMER 2008
ESSENTIAL FIELD EPIDEMIOLOGY: OUTBREAK INVESTIGATIONS
Public Health N257, CCN 76480 (Lecture) & 76485 (Lab), 3 units
July 28 to August 8, 2008
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH & Wayne Enanoria, PhD, MPH
Course description: This 2-week intensive course will cover the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to conduct an epidemiologic field investigation, including: essential concepts for the prevention and control of microbial threats; the epidemiologic approach and steps to public health action; steps to conducting an outbreak investigation, conducting a cause investigation; conducting a case investigation; conducting an analytics study; field survey design and implementation; operational aspects of conducting a field investigation; and analysis of outbreak modules using a computer laboratory. The computer lab component will emphasize basic analysis and interpretation. Students will be introduced to R, an open source program for statistical computing and graphics.
Students will be attending 3 hours of lecture in the mornings, and 3 hours of computer laboratory in the afternoons. Students will be expected to complete 2 to 3 hours of required reading and preparation in the evenings. The total workload is about 45 hours per week.
Course format: Lecture, discussion, and computer lab.
Target audience: This course is intended for public health graduate students and professionals who want to learn how to lead or participate in an epidemiologic field investigation, and who want to learn to analyze and interpret epidemiologic data. This includes public health practitioners and trainees, including Cal-EIS officers, Preventive Medicine Residents, health officers, deputy or assistant health officers, communicable disease investigators, environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, health educators, health officers, laboratorians, medical epidemiologists, and public health nurses.
Prerequisites: Introductory course in epidemiology or public health investigative experience.
Schedule & Location:
MTWTF 9A-12P, 2326 Tolman Hall
MTWTF 1P-4P, 212 Wheeler Hall
Course syllabus: Click Here
Registration: For 3 units of academic credit, register for UC Berkeley Summer School (http://summer.berkeley.edu/).
Cost: UC Undergraduate Student $486; UC Graduate Student $682.00; Visiting $540.00 plus registration fees.
For more information: For more information, contact Dr. Tomás Aragón (Email: aragon@berkeley.edu; Tel: 510-643-4935).
Spring 2008
MODELING THE DYNAMICS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE PROCESSES
Public Health 252B
Instructor: Travis Porco, PhD, MPH, Course Instructor, Mathematical Epidemiology, San Francisco Department of Public Health's Epidemiology and Effectiveness Research Unit
Course Description: This course will cover the basic tools required to both critically read modeling papers and to develop and use models as research tools. Emphasis will be placed on using models to understand infectious disease processes and to evaluate potential control strategies. The class meeting will consist of both lecture material covering conceptual issues and a computer lab to apply these concepts using standard infectious disease models.
Course Format: Lecture
Schedule: January 22 – May 6, 2008; Tuesdays 9:00 am – 11:00 am
Location: CIDER, 1918 University Ave., 4th Fl. (at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way), Berkeley, CA 94704
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 252B. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact us at cidp@berkeley.edu or (510) 643-4939.
EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CONTROL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Public Health 253B
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH, Director and Medical Epidemiologist, Center for Infectious Disease & Emergency Readiness, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Course Description: This is a one semester intensive introduction to the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases. The course is taught from the perspective public health communicable disease control officers: frontline practitioners that detect, investigate, control, and prevent infectious diseases in communities. The lectures are given by public health communicable disease experts that practice, teach, investigate, and conduct research in their specific areas. The course will emphasize:
(1) core concepts in infectious disease transmission mechanisms, dynamics, and containment;
(2) evidence-based approaches to designing and implementing infectious disease control and prevention measures;
and
(3) epidemiologic methods for investigating infectious diseases.
Course Format: Lecture
Schedule: January 28 – May 12, 2008; Mondays 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Location: CIDER, 1918 University Ave., 4th Fl. (at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way), Berkeley, CA 94704
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 253B. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact us at cidp@berkeley.edu or (510) 643-4939.
DISASTER EPIDEMIOLOGY: METHODS AND APPLICATIONS
Public Health 257A
Instructor: Wayne Enanoria, PhD, MPH, Public Health Epidemiologist and Program Director, Epidemiology Preparedness and Informatics Program
Course Description: This course is an introduction to disaster epidemiology. Epidemiologists play an important role in assessing the health effects of natural and man-made disasters and in identifying the factors that contribute to these effects. The emphasis of this course will be on the application of epidemiologic methods to the study of the public health consequences of disasters with the purpose of identifying lessons learned from previous disasters, highlighting key skills that an epidemiologist would need to be part of a response, and identifying methodological issues for future work.
Course Format: Lecture
Schedule: January 22 – May 6, 2008; Tuesdays 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location: 2320 Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley Campus
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 257A. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact us at cidp@berkeley.edu or (510) 643-4939.
FALL 2007
APPLIED EPIDEMIOLOGY USING R
Public Health 298, Section 36, CCN 76592, 2 units
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH
Course Description: This is an intensive, one-semester introduction to the R programming language for applied epidemiology. R is a freely available, multi-platform (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS), versatile, and powerful program for statistical computing and graphics (http://www.r-project.org). This course will focus on core basics of organizing, managing, and manipulating epidemiologic data; basic epidemiologic applications; introduction to R programming; and basic R graphics.
Course Format: Lecture and computer demonstration. You are welcome to bring your laptop with R pre-installed.
Target Audience: This course is intended for epidemiologists, medical epidemiologists, data analysts, and demographers that want an introduction to the R language.
Prerequisites: Completion of one semester of epidemiology and one semester of biostatistics.
Schedule: Tuesdays, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm, starting August 28, 2007 till December 20, 2007. The course will be taped and made available via the Webcast page.
Location: CIDER: 1918 University Avenue, 4th Floor
Course Syllabus: For fall, 2007, syllabus click here (PDF).
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 298, Sect. 36, CCN 76592. For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact Jeannie Balido at jybalido@idready.org.
For More Information: Call 510-643-4935 or send email to aragon@berkeley.edu or download the flyer.
ETHICS AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN AN AGE OF TERRORISM
Public Health 298, Section 69, CCN 76931, 2 units
Instructor: Harvey Kayman, MD, MPH, PHMO III
Course description: Terrorism, whether biological, chemical, or nuclear, presents special challenges to caregivers, health-care institutions, community organizations, and government agencies. Finding one's way ethically is particularly problematic. Issues of professional conduct and responsibility, of civil rights and civil liberties, of conscience, are bound to appear. Preparation for facing these is necessary particularly since if and when a terror event occurs, decisions will have to be made rapidly under anxiety filled and emergency conditions. The goal of this course is to prepare caregivers and others for response to the moral dimensions of a terror event. This course will discuss the role of public health in addressing various ethical, emotional and legal dilemmas posed by planning for and responding to terrorist attack and emerging infectious diseases.
Course format: Lecture
Target audience: UC Berkeley School of Public Health Students and Public Health Professionals.
Prerequisites: None
Schedule: Thursdays, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm, starting August 30, 2007 till December 20, 2007.
Location: 2319 Tolman Hall, UC Berkeley Campus.
Course syllabus: For a tentative syllabus click here (PDF).
Registration: UC Berkeley students should register for Public Health 298, Sect. 69, CCN 76931.For non-academic enrollment and certification, contact Jeannie Balido at jybalido@idready.org.
SUMMER 2007
ESSENTIAL FIELD EPIDEMIOLOGY: OUTBREAK INVESTIGATIONS
Public Health N257, CCN 76493 & 76660 (Lab), 3 units
July 30 to August 17, 2007 (Session E)
Instructor: Tomás Aragón, MD, DrPH & Wayne Enanoria, PhD, MPH
Course description: This 3-unit, 3-week intensive course will cover the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to conduct an epidemiologic field investigation, including: essential concepts for the prevention and control of microbial threats; the epidemiologic approach and steps to public health action, steps to conducting an outbreak investigation, steps to conducting post-disaster rapid health assessments, field sampling design and implementation, field survey design and implementation, design and management of field database systems, and operational aspects of conducting a field investigation; and analysis of outbreak modules using a computer laboratory. The computer lab component will emphasize basic analysis and interpretation. Students will be introduced to two software packages: R, an open source program for statistical computing and graphics; and EpiData, an open source program for questionnaire design, data collection, and basic data analysis.
Students will be attending 3 hours of lecture in the mornings, and 3 hours of computer laboratory in the afternoons. Students will be expected to complete 2 to 3 hours of required reading and preparation in the evenings. The total workload is about 45 hours per week.
Course format: Lecture, discussion, and computer lab.
Target audience: This course is intended for public health graduate students and professionals who want to learn how to lead or participate in an epidemiologic field investigation, and who want to learn to analyze and interpret epidemiologic data. This includes public health practitioners and trainees, including Cal-EIS officers, Preventive Medicine Residents, health officers, deputy or assistant health officers, communicable disease investigators, environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, health educators, health officers, laboratorians, medical epidemiologists, and public health nurses.
Prerequisites: Introductory course in epidemiology or public health investigative experience.
Schedule & Location:
MTWTF 9A-12P, 123 Wheeler Hall
MTWTF 1P-4P, 212 Wheeler Hall
Course syllabus: Available from http://www.idready.org/courses/2007/summer/PubHlth_N257-syllabus.pdf.
Registration: For 3 units of academic credit, register for UC Berkeley Summer School (http://summer.berkeley.edu/). For non-academic registration, contact Jeannie Balido at jybalido@idready.org.
Cost: Full Registration for non-academic students - $660.00. If you would like to only take the first two weeks of Field Epidemiology, the cost will be $440.00 for non-academic students.
For more information: For more information, contact Dr. Tomás Aragón (Email: aragon@berkeley.edu; Tel: 510-643-4935). Also, feel free to download and share our course flyer.
Updated: 12-07-07; 2:38 pm; JD
