PBHL12001 - Communicable Diseases and Public Health

General Information

Unit Synopsis

The prevention of disease is recognised internationally as being of fundamental importance to quality of life and is a core skillset for any public health professional. This unit covers the important public health topic of communicable diseases and their control. Students will learn the value of participation by engaging in team activities and tutorial activities. They will learn about prevention by exploring the aetiologies, risk factors, epidemiological trends and underlying issues relating to a wide range of communicable diseases. Students will critique the public health literature and public health campaigns to discover the importance of partnerships in the effective control of communicable diseases. Topics will include the aetiology, transmission, epidemiological trends and control strategies relating to a range of communicable diseases, including enteric, vaccine preventable and sexually transmitted infections. The impact of communicable disease upon individual and population health will be explored, with particular emphasis on the indigenous community and global context. Students will develop skills in disease surveillance and/or the prevention or management of disease outbreaks. Residential school will be compulsory for Environmental Health students but optional for Health Promotion and other students.

Details

Level Undergraduate
Unit Level 2
Credit Points 6
Student Contribution Band SCA Band 2
Fraction of Full-Time Student Load 0.125
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites

48 credit points

Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).

Class Timetable View Unit Timetable
Residential School Compulsory Residential School
View Unit Residential School

Unit Availabilities from Term 3 - 2019

Term 1 - 2020 Profile
Mixed Mode
Term 1 - 2021 Profile
Mixed Mode
Term 1 - 2022 Profile
Mixed Mode
Term 1 - 2023 Profile
Mixed Mode
Term 1 - 2024 Profile
Mixed Mode

Attendance Requirements

All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes – in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).

Assessment Overview

Recommended Student Time Commitment

Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.

Assessment Tasks

Assessment Task Weighting
1. Online Test 15%
2. Online Test 15%
3. Online Test 15%
4. Written Assessment 55%

This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).

Consult the University’s Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades

Past Exams

To view Past Exams,
please login
Previous Feedback

Term 1 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 100.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 40.00% response rate.

Feedback, Recommendations and Responses

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Source: Self-reflection
Feedback
Continue to update lecture material content
Recommendation
Some content needs to be updated and aligned with PBHL11001 to facilitate scaffolded learning. Also, some content needs to be revised to better reflect the current health affairs post-pandemic
Action Taken
Content was updated to align with concepts covered in PBHL11001.
Source: Student feedback evaluation
Feedback
The residential school should have been spread across three or four days, not two. The field trip to the water treatment plant would have been more suitable for the unit where we were learning about water treatment, not this unit. Assessment Four was interesting but felt very outdated and limited learning as it was very much a regurgitation of information rather than learning; practicing; assessing. A smaller scale outbreak investigation topic would have been far better to investigate and it would have been far more beneficial to actually run through the assessment from week one, providing a little more data each week and learning epi info across each week as well, putting in the data and interpreting the results at the same time so that the assessment had some meaning. Hands on learning for this assessment would be far more beneficial for students to actively learn testing methods, data gathering and interpreting, data input (epi info) and output (graphs/figures) and finish off with a small scale investigation report with data we have gathered rather than been provided.
Recommendation
Run residential school for three days Explain to students the purpose of the field trips so that they can relate it to their outbreak investigation. Alternatively, the outbreak investigation exercise should be changed to reflect an outbreak due to a contaminate in a water treatment plant Consider revising the outbreak investigation assessment to reflect an Australian case and asking students to complete the investigation assessment on Epi Info
Action Taken
Residential school was run for the full three days, which students found helpful.
Source: Personal reflection
Feedback
Residential school was run for two days (Thursday and Friday), which many students found too intensive. The difficulty of catching flights in the afternoon out of Rockhampton meant that many students could not attend the planned report writing session on Saturday because they had to catch their flights home on Saturday morning.
Recommendation
it is recommended that no residential school is scheduled to extend into weekend. Also, residential school should run for three days to allow ample time for students' discussions and engagement with the learning materials.
Action Taken
Residential school was delivered on weekdays.
Source: Personal reflection
Feedback
Communucable disease management is evolving.
Recommendation
Continue revising learning materials to include emerging issues relating to communicable diseases.
Action Taken
Nil.
Source: Personal reflection
Feedback
Videoconference was problematic during Residential School.
Recommendation
Consult TASAC prior to running videoconferences during residential school.
Action Taken
Nil.
Unit learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  1. Describe risk factors and aetiology for a range of communicable diseases important to public health.
  2. Explain the impact of communicable diseases in the context of individual and population health.
  3. Identify and analyse primary, secondary and tertiary approaches for the prevention and control of communicable diseases.
  4. Evaluate the social and cultural impact of notifiable diseases.
  5. Explain the methods of measurement, monitoring, prioritisation and surveillance of communicable disease and how they are used to safeguard public health.

The learning outcomes of this unit relate to the enHealth Skills and Knowledge Matrix:

Part 1- all generic attributes

Part 2- underpinning skills and knowledge in the areas of

  • Science
    • basic human anatomy and physiology related to identifying disease causation and exposure pathways
    • microorganisms of significance for human health
    • transmission mechanisms and likely carriers
    • infective dose levels
  • Public & Environmental Health Concepts
    • The points of impact to influence environmental health determinants and related methods of impact
  • Research methods
    • Effective design and implementation of studies, policies and programs to protect public and environmental health and minimise risks

Part 3- Applied Skills and Knowledge

  • Prevention and control of notifiable and communicable conditions.

Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
Assessment Tasks Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4 5
1 - Online Test
2 - Online Test
3 - Online Test
4 - Written Assessment
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
Introductory Level
Intermediate Level
Graduate Level
Graduate Attributes Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4 5
1 - Communication
2 - Problem Solving
3 - Critical Thinking
4 - Information Literacy
6 - Information Technology Competence
7 - Cross Cultural Competence
8 - Ethical practice
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Graduate Attributes
Introductory Level
Intermediate Level
Graduate Level
Assessment Tasks Graduate Attributes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 - Online Test
2 - Online Test
3 - Online Test
4 - Written Assessment