Public health experts from throughout the UK have signed up for a course that will help them understand how disease spreads.
Disease Mapping and Risk Assessment is a two-day professional development course organised by the Department of Mathematical Sciences and Prospect CPD, the University’s continuing professional development enterprise.
Dr Andrew Lawson, University of Aberdeen, and Dr Fiona Williams, University of Dundee will lead the course, which will take place in June.
Dr Lawson, of the Department of Mathematics and a World Health Organisation (WHO) adviser on Disease Mapping, said that the course is designed to provide an introduction to the subject in applications to public health and epidemiology.
It is primarily intended for epidemiologists and public health workers who need to analyse geographical disease incidence, but has sparked interest from a wide range of individuals and organisations in both the UK and abroad. These include geographers, marine and environmental scientists, and medical computing specialists from Universities, Marine Laboratories, the World Health Organisation, the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, Health Authorities, and a Veterinary School amongst others.
Dr Lawson, who has authored three books on the subject, said: “The sessions include basic concepts of disease mapping, ecological analysis, disease cluster assessment and risk assessment around health hazards.
“The emphasis of the course is practical and incorporates a review and hands on session of Geographical Information Systems for disease mapping as well as the group examination of a case study. The course is really geared towards public health, mapping diseases such as meningitis and cancer clusters around refineries. It could also be relevant to the current foot-and-mouth outbreak.”
It is the third year the course has been held in Aberdeen, believed to be the only centre in the UK that offers the course. In the past, it has been offered successfully internationally at the Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium, the ISCB annual conference in Dundee 1998, and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. An extended version of the course is also being given in Wellington, New Zealand, sponsored by the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
Further Information:
University Press Office on telephone +44 (0)1224-273778 or email a.ramsay@admin.abdn.ac.uk.