Overview
This course examines the principles, methods, and applications of public health surveillance. Students analyse the purposes, components, development, and operation of surveillance systems, including passive, active, sentinel, syndromic, laboratory-based, event-based, immunization, environmental, mortality, morbidity, communicable disease, and noncommunicable disease surveillance.
The course develops competence in defining cases, selecting indicators and reporting mechanisms, assessing population coverage and data quality, calculating and interpreting rates and trends, evaluating system performance, identifying bias and underreporting, and distinguishing meaningful signals from random variation. It also addresses outbreak detection, surveillance among vulnerable populations, privacy and confidentiality, legal and ethical responsibilities, interoperability, dashboards, geographic information systems, and emerging digital data sources. Applied activities include reviewing surveillance reports, constructing time-series displays, evaluating real or simulated systems, and communicating findings to technical and community audiences.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the purposes, components, historical development, and operational characteristics of public health surveillance systems.
- Differentiate passive, active, sentinel, syndromic, laboratory-based, event-based, and other surveillance approaches according to their public health applications.
- Construct case definitions, indicators, reporting workflows, rates, and time-series displays for routine and outbreak surveillance.
- Evaluate surveillance systems using measures of sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, representativeness, timeliness, simplicity, flexibility, acceptability, and stability.
- Analyse surveillance data to identify trends, thresholds, anomalies, bias, underreporting, and limitations in data quality.
- Design a basic surveillance system that addresses population coverage, reporting mechanisms, interoperability, privacy, confidentiality, and ethical responsibilities.
- Interpret dashboards, geographic information systems, and emerging digital data sources for public health decision-making.
- Communicate surveillance findings and improvement recommendations to technical and community audiences using appropriate written, visual, and oral formats.
Timetable
| Type | Length | Frequency | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 2 hours | Weekly | All semester |
| Lab | 2 hours | Weekly | All semester |
| Tutorial | 1 hour | Fortnightly | All semester |
Assessment Schedule
| Type | Description | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | Surveillance report review | 15.00% |
| Assignment | Rates and time-series analysis | 20.00% |
| Assignment | Surveillance system evaluation | 20.00% |
| Quiz | Quizzes (4 × 5%) | 20.00% |
| Test | Practical test | 10.00% |
| Exam | Final examination | 15.00% |
Prerequisites
Teaching Staff & Programs
This course is delivered jointly by faculty from the participating programs listed below. In line with the Douchewater Way, the University of Sexology tailors core instruction directly to each cohort's specific discipline — adapting curriculum to program needs rather than forcing students into a one-size-fits-all model. Learn more about our approach at The Douchewater Way.
