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Outbreak and Investigation Reading Resources

Welcome to the One Health Resource Library. Below, watch the video of Dr. Marcela Uhart, a wildlife veterinarian with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, as she provides background and context on the content that is available for download in this library.

Field Guides

Terms of Use
The Field Guides provided here are intended as guidance for professionals who have formal training in the methods required to sample different species. These Field Guides provide guidance but are not intended to be a standalone training, and all activities described in the following documents should only be performed by qualified individuals. These Field Guides provide guidance but are not intended to be a standalone training, and all activities described in the following documents should only be performed by qualified individuals.

Module 1 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

  • For further information on the approach to outbreak investigation, please find attached below a perspective by Dr. Arthur Reingold published in Emerging Infectious Diseases in 1998.

Reingold 1998_Outbreak Investigations – A Perspective.pdf

  • FOCUS of Field Epidemiology is a periodical published bi-monthly between 2003-2008 by the North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Below is Volume 1 of the first issue, which provides an overview of outbreak investigations. We will return to several other issues of FOCUS throughout this course, with the complete series made available online here: https://sph.unc.edu/epid/focus/ 

FOCUS_Field Epidemiology_UNC.pdf

  • For an overview of the epidemiology principles for outbreak response and description of where progress has been made over the past 5 years, please read the below publication by Drs. Catherine F Houlihan and and James AG Whitworth of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published in Clinical Medicine in 2019.

Houlihan and Whitworth_2019.pdf

Module 2 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

  • Below, please see the WHO’s COVID-19 case definitions for SARS-COV-2 infection from December 2020. This is a nice example of the different criteria for a suspect, probable, and confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

WHO-2019-nCoV-Surveillance_Case_Definition-2020.2-eng.pdf

Additional Recommended Viewings

  • A series of training videos on the 10 steps of an outbreak investigation were produced for an online learning platform of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. These outbreak training modules are from the ECDC’s Introduction to Outbreak Investigation e-learning course.  Access to these video resources is free, however you will first need to create an account with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to access the e-learning videos. Instructions on how to create an account with the ECDC and to enroll in the “Introduction to Outbreak Investigation” e-learning course are below.  To register an account with the ECDC, please visit: https://register.ecdc.europa.eu/register and create a new user account. You will be asked to verify your email address. Once you have confirmed your account, you may now sign in as an external user, using your username or email address in combination with your password. For any technical issues, please contact the ECDC Helpdesk – ICT Front Office by emailing: ICT.FrontOffice@ecdc.europa.eu. Once you have successfully created your account and enrolled in the ECDC Introduction to Outbreak Investigation course, we would recommend viewing the following videos to accompany Module 2:
    • ECDC Step 1 – Establish the existence of an outbreak
    • ECDC Step 3 – Establish a case definition

Module 3 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

  • Below is Volume 1, Issue 2 of the FOCUS on Field Epidemiology newsletter from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, describing the anatomy and physiology of an outbreak investigation team.

FOCUS_Outbreak Team_UNC.pdf  Download FOCUS_Outbreak Team_UNC.pdf

  • For more information on surveillance systems, please review Volume 5, Issue 6 of the FOCUS on Field Epidemiology newsletter from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

FOCUS_Surveillance Systems_UNC.pdf  Download FOCUS_Surveillance Systems_UNC.pdf

Additional Recommended Viewing

  • Instructions on how to register for the European Centres for Disease Control (ECDC) e-learning course on Introduction to Outbreak Investigation can be found under “Additional Recommended Viewing” for Module 2. To accompany the lessons and learning objectives from Module 3, we recommend you watch the following video from the ECDC Outbreak Investigation course:
  • ECDC Step 4 – Identify cases and obtain information

Module 4 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

Module 5 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

  • For additional reading on epidemiologic study methods, including how we compare the risk of disease and the presence or absence of risk factors, please find here Chapter 13 of Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, “Epidemiologic Principles”, authored by Drs. Michael Osterholm and Craig Hedberg.

Osterholm and Hedberg_Epidemiologic Principles-1.pdf

  • For more general information on interviewing techniques and tips during an outbreak investigation, please read Volume 2, Issue 3 of the FOCUS on Field Epidemiology newsletter from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

FOCUS_Interviewing Techniques_UNC.pdf

Additional Recommended Viewings

Instructions on how to register for the European Centres for Disease Control (ECDC) e-learning course on Introduction to Outbreak Investigation can be found under “Additional Recommended Viewing” for Module 2. To accompany the lessons and learning objectives from Module 5, we recommend you watch the following video from the ECDC Outbreak Investigation course:

  • ECDC Step 5 – Generate a hypothesis
  • ECDC Step 6 – Evaluate the hypothesis

Module 6 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Video Trainings

  • For further information on COVID-19 laboratory work, please watch the below video: “In collaboration with the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) and the LabCoP community, the CDC International Laboratory Branch (ILB) offers this healthcare and laboratory waste management distance learning opportunity. These sessions cover critical issues of waste management with particular focus on viral load waste products, and are relevant to laboratorians, laboratory safety managers, biosafety officers, waste management and environmental protection personnel, quality assurance personnel, and healthcare workers.”

May 2020 Waste Management Training: COVID-19 Biosafety Guidance for Laboratories

Module 7 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

Oleske2010_Chapter_DescriptiveEpidemiologicalMeth.pdf

Module 8 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Trainings

Module 9 Recommended Readings

Below, please find the OIE training manual on wildlife disease surveillance specific to outbreak investigations in wildlife. Other relevant training manuals developed for the OIE Wildlife Focal Point can be found here 

Below are example SOPs and protocols developed for the safe and human collection of rodents, bats, non-human primates, bush-meat, and principles of field biosafety and physical security during field ecology investigations.

Below is a reference chapter “Safe Work Practices for Working with Wildlife” from the US Geological Survey detailed an approach to field ecology investigations and example donning and doffing procedures for field PPE.

Below are references that describe in more detail the proper setup and analysis of rodent capture webs and transects to ensure scientifically valid measurements of species diversity and abundance during field ecological investigations of rodents.

Module 10 Recommended Readings

Additional Recommended Readings

  • The 3rd Edition of the International Health Regulations (2005) can be accessed and downloaded using the below PDF.

IHR_2005_3rd edition_English.pdf

Additional Recommended Viewing

How IRBs Protect Human Research Participants

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