Bio-Defense and Public Policy Certificate Requirements
The curriculum will consist of five courses. Students are required to take one core GPPI course and one core MICB course. The three remaining courses must be taken through Microbiology and/or GPPI. A list of possible electives are listed below.
Courses-GPPI
Core
PPOL 740: Decision Making for Public Policy
The objective of this course is to make students better producers and consumers of analyses and evaluations of public policy, as well as better decision-makers. The course does not focus on methodology per se. Rather, the focus is on the role of managers and executives in seeking and organizing the gathering of systematic information to address crises as well as more routine policy problems.
Electives
PPOL 527: Risk Analysis
This course focuses on human health risk assessment and covers the following set of interrelated steps that are used in assessing environmental risks: hazard identification, dose-response, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Current key topics in the evolution of risk assessment are covered, such as shifting emphasis from risk identification to risk characterization, from cancer effects to an inclusive focus on other diseases and deficits, and from dose-response to a greater emphasis on mechanisms and modes of action at the cellular and genetic level. The course also features discussions of cascading conservatism, bias towards synthetic over natural risks, and the difficulties of conducting epidemiological studies. The course will emphasize examples from the U.S. EPA, but some attention will also be paid to how other government agencies assess risks.
PPOL 612: Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
This course investigates how various aspects of federalism, intergovernmental relations, and multi-tiered government affect public action. The first part of the course will be dedicated to the normative, theoretical, and historical content of federalism and intergovernmental relations in the United States and other countries. For example, how should federal and state responsibilities be allocated? Should federal mandates and federal transfers go hand in hand? Should the federal government rely more on persuasion and less on coercion? The second part of the course will be dedicated to the workings of federalism and intergovernmental relations in different policy areas, including homeland security.
PPOL 648: Epidemiology for Public Policy
This course will provide an introduction to the basic quantitative and qualitative methods of epidemiology, and illustrate their use in public health practice and the development of health and environmental policy. Methodological topics will include the dynamics of disease transmission, the measurement of mortality and morbidity, community health assessment, disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, population-based screening programs, epidemiologic study design and analysis, and ethical issues in epidemiology. Methods will be illustrated through a series of in-depth policy examples, including health disparities, HIV/AIDS surveillance, prenatal HIV screening, quality of health care, privacy and confidentiality of health information, smallpox vaccination policy, syndromic surveillance, SARS, and public health preparedness for bioterrorism.
PPOL 688: Homeland Security
This course is intended to provide a broad and deep understanding of a very large subject: the defense of the homeland against violent attack. The goal is to provide students a thorough understanding of the policy, strategy, legal and organizational issues and challenges associated with the defense of the U.S. homeland, the efforts underway to meet those challenges, and the range of means and methods that are or could be brought to bear on this subject.
PPOL 812: Homeland Security & Counter-Terrorism Planning
This course will examine key policy issues and balances that must be address in strategic planning for homeland security and counterterrorism, particularly in science and technology planning. The course will examine terrorist threats to the homeland, how these threats can leverage science and technology, and policy issues and balances that must be resolved to deny or undermine terrorists' capabilities to attack the US homeland. The course will also examine key missions, elements, and planning principles of homeland security, the role of science and technology in protecting the US homeland, and the key policy issues that must be resolved to use capabilities effectively in protecting the US homeland, balanced against other important public policy goals.
Courses-Microbiology
MICB 515: Microbiology of Biological Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases
This course will cover NIH bioterrorism agents (categories A-C), which can be utilized as biological weapons. The microbiology of these agents will focus on structure, pathology, and virulence factors. The immune response to these agents will be presented. Viral agents will include Variola and hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola and Lassa). Bacterial agents will include B. anthracis, Yersinia pestis (plague), and Francisella tularensis (tularemia). Emerging infectious disease threats such as Nipah virus and Hantavirus will also be covered.
Sample Electives
MICB 517: Bioterrorism
This course will examine the use of biological weapons. Terrorism in its modern form will be discussed as well as which biological agents are most likely to be used, their techniques for deployment, and their prevention and control. Specific disease agents to be covered will include anthrax, plague, botulism, smallpox, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
MICB 518: Principles of Biodefense
This course will focus on state biowarfare programs, international measures, BW convention, cooperative threat reduction, national, state, and local preparedness, catastrophe management, pathogen detection, as well as NIAID, DHS, and DOD research agendas. Field trips to USAMRIID and Washington Hospital Center ER-1 are planned.
MICB 519: Biosurveillance: An Applied, Multidisciplinary Approach
This course will cover a domain of managing biological threats through biosurveillance. The course will examine the historical, sociological, and technical aspects of biosurveillance. A required laboratory component will examine medical, animal, zoonotic, crop, and food surveillance ? as well as detection of catastrophic bioevents. Students will participate in simulations of bioterrorist attacks to illustrate the use of surveillance to trigger response.
MICB-523: Biodefense Public Health Countermeasures
This course will examine four Public Health countermeasures against biological threat agents: vaccines, antimicrobials, isolation, and quarantine. Detailed analyses of the SARS outbreak of 2003, the anthrax attacks of 2001, and the US smallpox vaccination program will include lessons learned that can be applied to preparing for pandemic influenza, pneumonic plague, or catastrophic bioterrorism as anticipated by the US Cities Readiness Initiative. Vaccines, both licensed and investigational, will be emphasized throughout this 30-hour course. The FDA regulatory process required for the study and licensure of vaccines will be also detailed. Grading will be based on a written exam and on a term paper that focuses on an area chosen by the student. After submission of the final paper it must be defended.
MICB 525: Homeland Security 2015
This course will delve into the future on what homeland security will be like in year 2015. Current assessments and future predictions will be analyzed. Threats, trends, and implications for homeland security in 2015 will be examined.
