Title: North Carolina Preparedness Center Kicks Off New Field Epidemiology Program
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Section/SPIG: Epidemiology
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The beginning of the fall semester brought a new opportunity for epidemiologists to develop their skills. The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill opened a new online Certificate in Field Epidemiology on August 30, with 99 students enrolled in the program.
The students — from 27 different U.S. states, Canada, the Virgin Islands, Indonesia, and Kenya — will move through the program in a cohort and complete the course requirements next fall. The curriculum addresses the core functions of outbreak investigation, surveillance systems and methods, infectious disease epidemiology, and field epidemiology methods. All courses in the 12-credit program of study are taught by faculty in the Department of Epidemiology in the UNC School of Public Health.
As the practice of public health changes, so do the educational needs of public health practitioners, particularly in the area of field epidemiology. However, a 2001 survey by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists showed that many epidemiologists in state and territorial health departments had no formal training in epidemiology. The Certificate in Field Epidemiology was designed to address this training need and offer an educational program available to working practitioners across the nation.
The Certificate in Field Epidemiology was developed and is sponsored by the North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness in the North Carolina Institute for Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More information about the program and applications for fall 2006 are available online at <http://www.sph.unc.edu/nciph/fieldepi/>.