Following the development of an introductory Continuing Education (CME) course in syndromic surveillance, the Education and Training Committee of the International Society for Disease Surveillance recognized the need to educate future non-medical public health workers and reviewed courses offered by the top five public health schools recognized by US News and World Report1. All public health schools offered courses that included information on public health practice and infectious disease epidemiology and few offered courses on spatial and disaster epidemiology with attention given to syndromic surveillance, but none of the schools offered a comprehensive course that integrated topics of public health practice, infectious disease surveillance, data management and analytic techniques, disaster preparedness, and syndromic surveillance2-6. The development of the graduate school course builds on our existing CME slide set goals that teaches students about syndromic surveillance and presents the course in a free and easy to use format for all schools of public health. The ISDS hopes the semester long course will be taught by ISDS members in each state to spread awareness and knowledge on the topic of syndromic surveillance.
Objective
The paper describes the development of a graduate-level course to teach future non-medical public health workers about syndromic surveillance.