Over the course of this series, we've seen that outbreak science is actually MANY sciences, including biology, epidemiology, sociology, and even economics! Because outbreak science is an interdisciplinary field, everyone has a role to play in ending outbreaks, including you! In this final episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we'll take a look at how different fields come together to prepare for and prevent outbreaks.
Throughout this series, and in our real lives, we've seen the chaos and devastation that outbreaks can cause. But there's good news! Eventually, outbreaks come to an end. In this episode, we'll look at some of the important tools of outbreak response, particularly vaccines, and also discuss the important work that happens in the aftermath of an outbreak.
When you think about the technology that helps us prevent outbreaks, what do you think of? Vaccines? Lab tests? Medications? What about toilets? That's right! Toilets are an important piece of technology that can help us prevent outbreaks! Toilets are a part of infrastructure, the important system that we'll be talking about in this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science. We'll look at how from physical infrastructure, from toilets, to sewers, to roads, and more, creates healthier environments for us and helps us prevent and deal with outbreaks.
In 1959, the WHO set out to eradicate smallpox, an ambitious goal that was achieved by 1980. But this goal wouldn't have been possible without coordination on all levels of society. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we'll look at cooperation on the individual, community, and national scale and see how by working together we can improve outcomes during an outbreak, prevent future outbreaks, and even eradicate disease.
Public health activities are all the ways society coordinates to deliver better health to people. That may sound super broad, and it is, so in this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we'll take a look at public health works to prevent outbreaks. We'll learn what public health is and what public health agencies do, look at the three tiers of public health responses, and revisit one of our favorite fictional cities to see these responses in action.
When outbreaks happen, we need to be able to predict the course they’ll take in the future, but of course we can’t run experiments on real people to figure that out. Thankfully we can simulate outbreaks and use models to find out how different scenarios could play out! In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we’ll look at what models are, how they help predict the course of an outbreak, and how we can use them to manage real world outbreaks.
At the heart of outbreaks are people! People are the ones who get sick, transmit diseases, and change the way they live in response to outbreaks. In outbreak science, we can better understand the relationship between people and disease through the discipline of epidemiology. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we’ll look at what epidemiology is and how it helps us track the spread of diseases, and even stop outbreaks.
Day to day, hospitals provide all kinds of services to help us get better and stay healthy, but during an outbreak, hospitals are the front line of the emergency. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we'll look at how hospitals and other healthcare facilities adapt in the face of an outbreak, from resources needs, the roles of healthcare workers, and costs.
We’re all susceptible to infectious disease of some kind or other, but not everyone is equally likely to be the victim of an outbreak. The fact is, inequalities both between and within communities mean that some people are at higher risk than others. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we’ll look deeper at the factors that lead to this uneven distribution of outbreaks.
We take it for granted that society gets better at tackling infectious disease over time, but when you really think about it the progress we’ve made in the last century is pretty amazing. How does that much progress happen so quickly? That’s what we’ll set out to answer in this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science as we look at the theory of epidemiological transition.
Welcome to Crash Course Outbreak Science! What do pathogens actually do to us that makes us sick? Why do societies respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases the way they do? How can we stop the next outbreak? These are the kinds of questions we'll ask ourselves and answer as best we can over the next 15 episodes of this series. Join us and Dr. Pardis Sabeti as we look at outbreaks from the microscopic level, to the big picture, so that we can work together to stop future outbreaks and create a healthier future for everyone.