Applied Epidemiology of Communicable Diseases in Australia

Abstract

While placed in the Communicable Diseases Epidemiology and Surveillance Section within the Office of Health Protection and Response (previously known as the Office of Health Protection), Australian Government Department of Health in Canberra, I completed four projects to meet the core competency requirements of the Master of Philosophy (Applied Epidemiology) program. My placement also provided numerous opportunities to conduct disease surveillance and response outside of my core MAE projects such as the opportunity to be part of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Epidemiology and Surveillance Team in the National Incident Room.

This thesis presents the projects undertaken: investigating a suspected viral gastroenteritis outbreak in the Australian Capital Territory; describing the epidemiology of gonorrhoea in Australia between 1999 and 2018; evaluating the performance of the primary surveillance system for COVID-19 against its surveillance objectives; and describing the epidemiology of COVID-19 in Australia between 1 January and 26 April 2020 including the identification of pre-existing comorbidities that are associated with severe COVID-19 illness. This thesis also describes the teaching activities I prepared to fulfil the teaching requirements of the MAE program. The primary objective of my Lessons from the Field was for participants to gain expertise in performing advanced searches using the MEDLINE (via Ovid) database.