This outbreak investigation is designed to be a fun and educational opportunity that puts you in the shoes of the responders that are trying to control the COVID-19 epidemic, walking you through each step you need to take.
Who is this for: 9th grade education or above (some knowledge of biology)
What does it contain: The facilitator and participant guides contain educational material, discussion questions, and case files. There is also a facilitator slide deck to show if you want to work through the activity on a shared zoom screen or projector. Finally, the contact tracing activity exists within the worksheets, but is also a standalone document if you wish to just do that activity.
Outcomes:
Understand how an outbreak investigation unfolds and the complexity of it
Walk through the steps of an outbreak investigation such as analyzing cases to develop a hypothesis on transmission, population at risk, incubation period, making an epi curve, creating interventions, writing a press release, and developing a contact tracing map
Learn how quickly a disease can spread and how difficult it can be to contain
Develop critical thinking and analytical skills in real world issues
Number of participants: While the Outbreak Investigation can be done individually, it is best done as a group discussion with 5-16 people for the contact tracing mystery
Length: The full Outbreak Investigation activity is estimated to take 2-3 hours to complete, but is broken up into sections if you want to split the activity. In addition, there are several standalone activities that take less than an hour if you want to give a general overview of an outbreak.
This guide is meant for the facilitator to run an entire activity, complete with an answer key
These are slides for facilitator to show
This workbook is for the entire outbreak investigation with room to answer questions
This activity is done like a “Murder Mystery” where each participant gets one (or more) characters and they have to act out their characteristics, where they have been, who they have saw, and try to work together to see how COVID-19 spread
This is a quick 30 minute powerpoint with discussion items going over a real outbreak that occurred in Maine in August of 2020.
Here’s a link to all the Google Drive files, including Google Editable files