Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Public Health Dimensions (FutureLearn)

This course will introduce you to some of these topics and concerns - examining the basics of biosecurity. It will help you understand how diseases spread and how we can use health intelligence to inform how we can manage issues of biosecurity.

Learn about identifying biosecurity events

In order to manage biosecurity events effectively it’s crucial to understand them. We’ll look at the basic principles of infectious disease investigation, epidemiology and communicable disease response. We’ll also work on examining the differences between natural versus unnatural patterns of infectious disease.

Understand how to analyse health intelligence in the event of a biosecurity threat

In today’s world vast amounts of data are generated in healthcare. We’ll look at how this intelligence can be interpreted and analysed in relation to biosecurity events.

Explore the ethical and policy concerns related to biosecurity

Finally, we’ll look at public health concerns related to biosecurity and bioterrorism events and evaluate the basic control measures for responding to such events. In doing this we’ll review some of the policy and ethical concerns related to contemporary biosecurity.

What will you achieve?

- Explain the basic principles of infectious disease investigation, epidemiology and public health response.

- Explain the basic principles of communicable disease response.

- Reflect on the differences between different types of bioterrorism and biological agent outbreaks or events.

- Identify the most important public health concerns, and the general response, to biosecurity and bioterrorism events.

- Reflect on the importance of health intelligence for the investigation and management of biosecurity and bioterrorism events.

- Debate basic policy and ethical concerns relating to contemporary biosecurity.