This course aims to describe the interrelation between our environment and human populations, local communities and individuals and the health risks of environmental hazards. The unit will explore the major categories of environmental health hazards including air quality, water quality, chemical hazards (eg soils and contaminated sites), physical hazards (eg noise and radiation), microbiological hazards (eg Legionnaires' disease) and food safety. Regional and global issues of sustainability, climate change and land use planning will also be covered. The disciplines of epidemiology, toxicology and ecology will be applied within a risk assessment framework. Students completing this unit will appreciate: the multi-disciplinary nature of environmental health; the application of a risk assessment framework to characterise health risks due to environmental hazards, determine risk management options, and inform risk communication strategies; the need to work closely with a broad range of stakeholders including commonwealth and state health, environment and planning agencies, local government, industry, researchers and the community.

The One Health unit explores the vast landscape of disease transmission among humans, animals, and their ecosystems. This unit has a strong focus on zoonotic diseases, which are those infections that can be transmitted from animals to humans, but also explores disease transmission more broadly through ecosystems. The unit first defines the biological, ecological, environmental, social, and economic contexts of pathogens. Relevant surveillance, analytical, and prevention strategies are then described and applied to several regional and global case studies. Specific case studies will include anthrax, avian influenza, hemorrhagic fevers, Henipavirus infections, Ross River virus, and Lyme disease. The unit's philosophical and methodological approaches to infectious disease are grounded in the unique One Health paradigm, which recognises the relationships between human, animal, and ecosystem health as inextricably linked and with each foundational to the improvement of all. Students will appreciate how One Health approaches provide exceptional utility in investigating and controlling infectious diseases in urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts especially where human-livestock-wildlife interfaces have emerged from human-altered landscapes. These interfaces currently present some of the world's most significant conduits of emergent disease and therefore delineate critical challenges for global health in the 21st century. Moreover, a better understanding of these interfaces opens intriguing possibilities for leveraging habitat and climate conservation in the interests of public health.

This unit will provide students with an understanding of the individual and societal risks of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and the rationale for, and barriers to, their prevention and control (PC). A basic understanding of medical microbiology and communicable disease epidemiology will be assumed. The unit will cover such important concepts as: introduction to healthcare associated infections (what they are, why they are important; fundamentals of infection prevention and control); how infections are transmitted and how can we interrupt this transmission?; hand hygiene theory, practice and evidence; outbreaks, methods to investigate outbreaks, including strain typing and whole genome sequencing, and to contain them; rationales and strategies for implementation of HAI-related policies; antimicrobial stewardship and its importance in the development of multi-drug resistant organisms; and challenges faced with management of emerging infectious diseases and high-consequence infections.
Attendance, in person, at workshops is strongly recommended, to enable participation in discussions. However, lectures will be recorded and available online after the workshops. Students who are unable to attend some or all of workshop sessions can view them, but generally not the associated discussions, online. Assessments are online. Students not attending face-to-face teaching will be expected to participate in online discussion.

This extension unit of study involves a student project under face-to-face supervision with concurrent online learning. Online content covers advanced concepts on immunisation for children, adolescents and adults. Students will have access to online learning resources such as readings and lectures and will be required to complete compulsory online quizzes over the 12 week semester. Students will also choose a project from a range of project-based activities offered by the NCIRS. Project topics include vaccine policy development; vaccine safety; vaccine effectiveness; evaluation of immunisation programs; immunisation in special populations; implementation of new vaccination programs; social research and latest developments in vaccinology. Students will be jointly supervised by the unit coordinator and other senior researchers associated with the NCIRS. They will work on their project at the NCIRS and have at least 4 compulsory face-to-face meetings with their supervisors across the semester. This includes an initial planning meeting followed by at least two meetings to discuss project progress and a final meeting to give feedback on the draft project report, before submission of the final project report (marked by an independent assessor).Students will spend approximately 6-8 hours/week (x 12 weeks) on the project.

The aim of this unit is to provide students with an understanding of immunisation principles, the impact of vaccination on the epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs), how to assess the need for new vaccines and how to implement and monitor a new vaccination program. This unit covers the history and impact of vaccination; basic immunological principles of immunisation; surveillance of diseases; vaccination coverage; vaccine effectiveness; vaccine safety; vaccine scares; risk communication; program evaluation; immunisation in the developing country context; health security; assessing disease burden and new vaccines. Learning activities include online learning modules introducing topics and concepts, followed by weekly online interactive lectures and case study tutorials throughout the semester. Students will have access to online learning resources, included reading lists, and will be required to complete compulsory online quizzes, assignments and a group assessment.

The unit presents critical views of climate change and the ways in which it interacts with human behaviour and population health from various disciplines, e. g. planetary health, international environmental governance and law, environmental economics, urban planning and environmental and social injustice. It addresses major public health risks associated with climate change and extremes, e. g. infectious disease, nutrition, cardiovascular disease, mental health, and indigenous health, in a broader concept of sustainability and global change. Scenarios with regards to responses to climate change, including adaptation and mitigation, will be introduced to build community resilience. This unit will provide both Australian and international perspectives on climate change and health, supported by theoretical and empirical research in both developed and developing countries.

This course is specifically designed for health professionals working in health care. It will equip participants with underpinning knowledge about patient safety. The course modules cover quality and safety principles, professionalism and ethics, the blame culture, risk information, health care as a system, the impact of adverse events, methods to measure and make improvements in health care. The modules, tools and the discussions are designed to enable participants to change behaviour by understanding the main causes of adverse events. The course provides foundation knowledge about quality and safety. Governments around the world are concerned to address unsafe care. The course will prepare health professional to understand the complexity of health care and take steps to minimise the opportunities for errors and address vulnerabilities in the system.

This unit gives candidates essential knowledge of prevention and control of communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries using country-specific examples. After successfully completing this unit of study, candidates will understand the key issues in communicable diseases and their control in developing countries, as well as gain the knowledge and insight on how prevention and control mechanisms and programs are developed for these diseases in resource-poor settings. The unit covers disease emergence, respiratory tract infections (including TB), vector-borne infections, food- and water-borne infections, neurological infections, neglected tropical diseases, bloodborne and sexually transmitted infections (including HIV) and drug-resistant infections.

This unit gives students an overview of global health aspects of forced migration and humanitarian emergencies. This includes considering problems faced by government and non-government organisations in humanitarian emergency relief efforts as well as the increasing pressures of forced migration resulting from these. Topics covered in the unit include international and human rights law, the role of donor agencies, refugee health, nutritional emergencies, site planning for refugee camps, water and sanitation, sexual violence, protection of vulnerable groups, and communicable disease surveillance and control.

This course will engage students in learning about evidence­based prevention and health promotion as a fundamental component of efforts to address sexual and reproductive health issues. The unit is divided into three sections: (i) theories underlying health promotion in public health context; (ii) evidence­based planning of campaigns and programs; and (iii) health communications and designing messages. Theories covered will include those that address individual­level change and group and social level change. Students will learn how to conduct needs assessments, plan programs, and address priority areas in sexual and reproductive health promotion. On completion of the unit, students will be able to: (i) Understand the importance of planning and management in health promotion; (ii) Describe the main constructs of major health promotion models; (iii) Describe the applicability of health promotion theory to sexual and reproductive health promotion; (iv) Conduct needs assessments, plan programs and address priority areas; (v) Discuss ways to apply the principles of health literacy when selecting or developing sexual and reproductive health promotion materials; and (vi) Effectively use assessment tools in planning sexual and reproductive health promotion evaluation activities.

The unit aims to provide a public health perspective on the impact of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and HIV. On completion of this unit, students will be able to understand: (i) The underlying principles of surveillance systems used to monitor STIs and HIV; (ii) The core risk activity groups involved HIV and STI transmission; (iii) The epidemiology of STIs and HIV and how it varies within and between societies; (iv) The public health impact of STIs and HIV; and (v) Effective preventative strategies at individual and community levels. Course content will include an introduction to the basic biology of HIV and STIs; epidemiology and surveillance methods; impact of HIV and STIs on vulnerable at-risk populations; prevention technologies and policy approaches.