Veterinary public health

Course goals

The course offers a comprehensive overview of topics and approaches designed to equip veterinary medicine students with knowledge and skills that are particularly suited to progression to research-, policy- and management/enforcement-oriented careers in public health and related fields. Specifically, the course aims to provide students with:

• Information on analytical methods and epidemiological approaches for the study of (zoonotic) infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, medicine residues and environmental contaminants in food safety and environmental protection, and how One Health can benefit from responsible and effective livestock production and environmental management.
• Information on major disease prevention, surveillance and control programs.
• Information on innovative animal farming systems and how to appraise and monitor them through the lens of public health and environmental sustainability.
• Information on how to formulate and test hypotheses, develop interdisciplinary research projects, present results and translate them into One Health recommendations.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Analyse and evaluate concepts and applications of risk assessment in One Health, including decision-making aspects of the management and communication of health risks from both biological and chemical hazards.
• Analyse and evaluate zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance surveillance programmes and tools that can be used to assist public health professionals in relation to planning, implementing and evaluating prevention and control activities.
• Analyse and evaluate the roles and tasks of different One Health professionals, including veterinarians, in the protection of human health and the environment through the safe production of foods of animal origin, control of zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, medicine residues and chemical contaminants, and sustainable food systems.
• Evaluate future livestock developments and apply tools to analyse the issues confronting producers, policy makers and consumers.
• Evaluate approaches to undertaking a research project, including how to present/translate results to policy makers.
• Understand and apply analytical methods used to analyse complex data, including omics data, and how to interpret the outcomes of these analyses.

 

Content

This 5-week elective course “Advanced Veterinary Public Health” is part of the “profiling space” (profileringsruimte) of the MSc Veterinary Medicine.

Veterinary Public Health (VPH) is a component of public health that focuses on the application of veterinary knowledge to protect and improve health and welfare of humans, using a One Health approach. The student will be introduced to advanced methods and applications from human, animal and environmental health domains to characterize, assess and manage risks from biological and chemical hazards, and how to prevent them.

The course is structured around four main themes:
1) microbial genomics, molecular epidemiology and microbiome research;
2) One Health surveillance, response, control and burden of zoonotic diseases;
3) healthy living environment and sustainable farming;
4) veterinary medicine residues and environmental contaminants in food.

The course aims to provide students with cutting-edge knowledge on these themes using an interdisciplinary approach at the human-animal-environment interface. Areas of controversy will also be addressed. The course is research-oriented and will be in English.

This course is also open for GSLS students.