From Drug Resistance to Donuts: Applied Epidemiology in the Australian Capital Territory

Abstract

This volume presents four projects and additional public health experiences satisfying the competencies of my Master of Philosophy (Applied Epidemiology) conducted through my field placement at ACT Health's Communicable Disease Control Branch. These projects comprise of two outbreak investigations, an outbreak of the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant of SARS-CoV-2 in a high school setting and a food-borne gastroenteritis outbreak associated with donuts from a single bakery; an epidemiological investigation into factors associated with a willingness to receive a COVID-19 booster vaccine among migrants in Australia born in the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Region; design of a surveillance system to add the multidrug-resistant organisms carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) as a notifiable condition in the ACT; and a descriptive and spatial analysis of hepatitis C notifications in the ACT over a ten-year period. The two final chapters of this thesis describe my experiences teaching epidemiology and other key public health activities of my field placement, including a secondment to ACT Health COVID-19 Operations branch, establishment of a surveillance and case management system for monkeypox virus, evaluating a letter program for GPs diagnosing hepatitis C in their patients, development of interactive dashboards for notifiable conditions, and introducing applied epidemiology to a high school class. The findings from my projects and the outputs of these additional experiences contribute to the body of knowledge for applied epidemiology and inform public health decision making and action.