Course Description
Emerging infectious diseases are a significant threat to modern society. This course will examine the rise of new pathogens in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the context of global environmental trends, including changes to trade and travel, land use, the distribution of wealth and poverty, and climate change.
Athena Title
Global Change Emerg Inf Dis
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will be able to: 1. List a number of emerging pathogens affecting humans, wildlife, and agricultural systems, and describe how they are shaping the modern world. 2. Explain how large-scale forces are driving the rise of new pathogens in animals and people. 3. Engage in science-based critical assessment of individual and public policy responses to emerging diseases, including preventative measures, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and medical countermeasures like vaccines. 4. Discuss how complex relationships among a variety of environmental changes – including trade and travel, land use, the distribution of wealth and poverty, and climate change – present significant obstacles to managing disease emergence. 5. Devise questions about disease emergence and describe how different approaches can examine these questions through critical thinking, research, and analysis.
Topical Outline
• Emerging pathogens in agriculture • Antimicrobial resistance • Climate change: will a warmer world be a sicker world? • Conflict and war • Disease transmission systems and pathogen persistence • Food security • From outbreak to pandemic to endemic: beyond Covid-19 • The importance of co-infection: HIV, malaria, Tb, and parasitic worms • Land use: how deforestation, mining, and hunting affect pathogens, hosts, and vectors • Spillover and the rise of zoonotic pathogens • Trade, travel, and the global movement of infections • Urbanization • Vaccine hesitancy and the resurgence of childhood diseases
Syllabus