Southampton helps develop e-learning resource for public health professionals
Along with colleagues from Public Health England, Dr Johanna Jefferies, Specialty Registrar in Public Health, Oxford Deanery and Honorary Lecturer for the Academic Unit of Clinical and Experimental Sciences at Southampton, has played a major in role in the development of "e-PathGen" an e-learning resource for public health professionals and others.
‘ePathGen - Pathogen Genomics for Epidemiology’ is an e-learning package that has been developed by a multi-disciplinary team from PHE working with collaborating academics as a beginners guide to using genomic sequencing by public health microbiologists and epidemiologists.
The resource is intended to support public health workers who need to develop a basic understanding of the evolving field of whole genome sequencing (WGS), pathogen genomics and its application to epidemiology and public health. e-PathGen allows users to proceed step by step through epidemiological investigations using, interpreting and combining genomic data in combination with more familiar information. It includes videos, a collection of introductory tutorials and illustrated case studies. e-PathGen is now publicly available at http://public-health-genomics.phe.org.uk
Within Public Health England (PHE), staff training and the development of training resources have been identified as urgent requirements to facilitate the translation of this work from research to public health practice.
After completing the e-learning, users should be able to:
- explain the basic principles of genomic sequencing important to health protection and epidemiology practice;
- critically evaluate the benefits and limitations of genomics to health protection and epidemiology practice;
- apply the principles of genomics and key genomics resources to solving a problem in health protection and epidemiology practice;
- communicate effectively and work collaboratively with microbiology and bioinformatics experts in PHE and partner organisations to investigate and solve problems in health protection and epidemiology practice, and
- reflect on how genomics may be integrated with and applied to health protection and epidemiology in own working context.
Dr Jefferies comments: “The public health application of pathogen genomics is a rapidly expanding field and it is important that public health professionals feel confident in when to use such technology and in interpreting the results. Research in Southampton is helping to build the evidence base by sequencing genomes of a number of important bacterial pathogens and it has been a great opportunity to be involved in the development of this resource.”