Itec bioterrorism

Group Project on Emerging Infectious Diseases

BSBD 641 – Summer 2020

Group Project: Your group (assigned by the instructor in Week 4) will be responsible for development of an Emerging Infectious Disease (EID) Threat Report presentation (PowerPoint) to an international meeting of infectious disease professionals. They want to understand the disease burden in your country and ways they can help. Your presentation will identify 4-5 major/important emerging (or reemerging) disease threats in the country your group selects. This will include human, animal, and plant disease threats. Your group must include at least one animal and one plant pest. Discuss the threat these pathogens pose - including any vectors or other means of transmission, the social and economic impacts of these EIDs, the geographical areas affected (distribution) and potential for spread, and methods to report and control these diseases. No two groups can choose the same country.

Final Grade for group project is 85% group project score plus 15% peer evaluation score. Students who do not contribute to their group’s effort will receive one warning from the instructor. If no improvement is noted, non-contributing students may be asked to complete this assignment as an individual student project.

Criteria (and grading – out of 100):

1. FORMAT (10 points): 25-30 slides. The presentation is professional, with no grammatical or typographical errors.

· Please use APA format to reference sources, both in the body of the presentation and in the reference section. Remember that multiple reference slides at the end of the presentation do not count toward your final slide count.

2. CONTENT (65 points): The information presented must identify 4-5 significant Emerging Infectious Disease Threats in the country selected (must include human, at least one animal, and one plant EIDs)

· (20 of the 65 points) Discussion of the EIDs you’ve selected and why they are important to address. Include information about each of the EID’s host range(s), transmission, disease characteristics, morbidity/mortality, and the overall “disease burden” to the country – including a consideration of the economic and societal impacts of the disease.

· (15 of the 65 points) Discuss any public health laws or measures available within that country for disease surveillance and control. Does the country’s health ministry publish data on disease occurrence or report on these EID to the WHO?

· (15 of the 65 points) Discuss available medical and non-medical countermeasures in place to address these EIDs. Are there NGOs or other international organizations working in the country to track and control them? Who is helping and how?

· (15 of the 65 points) Make a case for why others should care about these EIDs in this particular country and recommend 3 actions that could be taken in the near term to start to address them.

3. PRESENTATION (25 points): Slides must be organized in logical fashion and be visually engaging. The presentation should be appropriate for discussion with senior-level decisionmakers.

· The presentation should be short and concise with all pertinent information illustrated in a professional, coherent manner.

· Font and graphics (tables, charts, maps, etc.) should be legible and visually appealing. Remember, you are not writing a report then doing a copy/paste into a ppt slide.

· You MUST use the comments section to provide information which a speaker might include when discussing the slide. This should form a coherent narrative from start to finish.