Vaccines and Immunology – HLTH 626

CG • Section 8WK • 11/08/2019 to 04/16/2020 • Modified 09/05/2023

Course Description

This course provides an overview of the immune system. The course will cover immune mechanisms believed to be related to vaccine induced disease protection. The course will examine vaccine development.

For information regarding prerequisites for this course, please refer to the Academic Course Catalog.

Rationale

Vaccines are an invaluable tool in the public health effort to prevent morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases. Vaccine use is not without controversy. The public health practitioner must understand basics of immunology and vaccine development to respond properly to the legitimate concerns of the public and to use this resource wisely.

Course Assignment

After reading the Course Syllabus and Student Expectations, the student will complete the related checklist found in the Course Overview.

The student is required to provide a thread in response to the provided prompt for each discussion. In addition to the thread, the student is required to reply to 2 other classmates’ threads.

This is a 4-part project. The student will be given a background paper describing the origins of a novel avian influenza threat that began in the winter of 2013 and a fictional scenario based in Zambia suggesting the potential for development of a more serious epidemic situation.

Part 1 – Situation Assessment Assignment

The student will write a research-based paper focusing on the potential of avian influenza A (H7N9) to expand into a local epidemic or spread beyond to pandemic proportions.

Part 2 – Vaccine Development Progress Report Assignment

The student will write a research-based paper that focuses on the progress in the development of avian influenza A (H7N9) vaccine.

Part 3 – Designing a Mass Vaccination Campaign Assignment

The student will assume a pandemic of avian influenza is imminent if the outbreak cannot be confined to the geographic area identified in the fictional scenario. The student must design a culturally appropriate campaign and write a paper describing the vaccination campaign, using a newly available vaccine believed to have a 90% efficacy.

Part 4 – Implementation Assignment

The student will edit previous installments of the project based on instructor feedback and combine them to produce a single document. The student will write an additional section devoted to implementation barriers.

Each quiz will cover the Learn material for the Module: Week in which it is assigned. Each quiz will be open-book/open-notes, contain a variety of matching, multiple-choice, and/or true/false questions, and have a 1-hour time limit.