Essential Epidemiologic Tools for Public Health Practice Course Syllabus

Overview: This beginner-friendly course provides a concise introduction to essential epidemiologic tools used in public health practice. Over approximately 4 hours divided into four modules, you'll gain hands-on experience calculating key metrics, visualizing health data, and creating basic maps to understand disease patterns in populations. Each module combines foundational concepts with practical exercises using real-world data and widely used tools like QGIS.

Module 1: Role of Epidemiology in Public Health

Estimated time: 1 hour

• Definitions of public health and epidemiology
• Key components for population health
• Overview of the hands-on exercise
• Introduction to public health data through video and reading

Module 2: Numeric Estimates in Epidemiology

Estimated time: 1 hour

• Counts (numerators) and populations (denominators)
• Calculating ratios, proportions, and rates
• Understanding measures of disease burden
• Hands-on practice with sample data

Module 3: Depiction of Epidemiologic Data

Estimated time: 1 hour

• Principles of effective data visualization
• Identifying good versus poor visual designs
• Using global disease-burden data to visualize risk factors
• Creating a visualization using online datasets (e.g., IHME)

Module 4: Basic Mapping of Epidemiologic Data

Estimated time: 1 hour

• The role of place in public health
• GIS basics and spatial data handling
• Using QGIS with Census data
• Downloading and installing QGIS
• Building a map using spatial and epidemiologic data

Module 5: Final Project

Estimated time: 1 hour

• Integrate rate calculations from Module 2
• Create a data visualization based on risk factors
• Produce a basic map showing health data distribution using QGIS

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with basic computer operations
• Access to a computer with internet connection
• No prior experience in epidemiology or GIS required

What You'll Be Able to Do After

• Define public health and epidemiology and describe their role in community health
• Calculate and interpret key epidemiologic measures such as rates and proportions
• Create clear and effective visualizations of public health data
• Use QGIS to produce basic maps that display health patterns geographically
• Apply foundational skills to real-world public health data scenarios