After completing Hazards to Human and Animal Health, students will be able to: Describe the key elements of risk assessment and the concepts of hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) intervention; List sources of chemical contamination of food of animal origin and describe how to detect, monitor and prevent these; Explain how the national residue survey works; Discuss the microbial hazards in food of animal origin and the means by which they affect humans, and identify critical control points; Summarise key points of the current antibiotic resistance debate concerning the implications for public health of antibiotic use in animals; Describe critical aspects of important zoonotic diseases acquired by humans by ingestion of animal products and other routes of exposure and identify possible means of prevention; Analyse the factors that influence the emergence of new diseases and discuss changes that need to be implemented in animal and human health surveillance; List the notifiable animal diseases (endemic and emergency) in Australia and discuss the rationale and process for notification and control; describe global trends in livestock disease distribution - both in time and space; Describe the disease control programs for a range of current animal diseases and discuss their health, welfare and political ramifications.

After completing the Veterinary Epidemiology I unit students will be able to - discuss epidemiology and the work of epidemiologists in relation to other disciplines; apply the concepts of epidemic theory and herd immunity appropriately to animal disease control issues; contribute to investigations of disease outbreaks and low productivity in animal populations; calculate and interpret the measures of disease frequency and measures of association; select an appropriate epidemiological study design for a specific research question; identify and minimise sources of bias and error in study designs; select appropriate diagnostic tests and interpret their results (at individual and herd level).

This unit aims to provide students with an introduction to statistical concepts, their use and relevance in public health. This unit covers descriptive analyses to summarise and display data; concepts underlying statistical inference; basic statistical methods for the analysis of continuous and binary data; and statistical aspects of study design. Specific topics include: sampling; probability distributions; sampling distribution of the mean; confidence interval and significance tests for one-sample, two paired samples and two independent samples for continuous data and also binary data; correlation and simple linear regression; distribution-free methods for two paired samples, two independent samples and correlation; power and sample size estimation for simple studies; statistical aspects of study design and analysis. Students will be required to perform analyses using a calculator and will also be required to conduct analyses using statistical software (SPSS). It is expected that students spend an additional 2 hours per week preparing for their tutorials. Computing tasks are self-directed.

After completing Animal Health Economics, participants will be able to: Discuss the importance of animal diseases in efficiency of animal production, consumers' perceptions of animals and animal products, and global trade; Analyse economic problems using basic methods such as partial budgeting, cost-benefit analysis and decision analysis; Detail the critical steps in systems analysis and choose appropriate modelling types and techniques; Describe the uses of linear and dynamic programming, and Markov chain and Monte Carlo simulations; Discuss the basic principles of risk analysis; Explain the basic steps in the decision-making process and the role of risk analysis in this process; Explain the role of decision support systems in animal health management and demonstrate their profitability; Build and interpret spreadsheet models for economic analyses in MS EXCEL; Discuss the importance of Animal Health Economics in decision making, implementation and evaluation of animal health programs, and policy development and implementation processes.

After studying this unit students will be able to: Describe the important characteristics of the main epidemiological data types; Develop a data-collection form for an epidemiological study; Design a simple relational database for recording animal health-related data; Manage data in a computer spreadsheet, including importing, exporting, recoding, transforming and summarising data; Undertake descriptive analysis of data using computer spreadsheets or other appropriate software; Undertake descriptive analysis of data using computer spreadsheets or other appropriate software.

In this course, students will work with existing data. Issues of developing a study design will not be dealt with. students will however consider the impact of a particular study design on the interpretation of the data generated. after studying this unit students will be able to: identify potential sources of data and their strengths and weaknesses; identify and apply appropriate analytical and statistical methods for different purposes; analyse data using commonly available software programs; Identify and manage potential bias and confounding in data; describe and interpret the results of data analysis; incorporate the outcomes of data analysis in policy development.

After completing Veterinary Epidemiology 2, students will be able to design an appropriate epidemiology study to investigate a specific research question, including the: sampling procedure; data collection tools; database for data storage and manipulation; statistical procedures; methods to manage confounders, clustering and collinearity.

This Unit of Study, delivered by distance education using an online classroom, will using four case studies introduce students to the application of three statistical procedures (linear regression, logistic regression, survival analysis) in epidemiological research for animal health and public health. Approaches to account for the impact of confounding, effect modification and clustering suitable for these statistical procedures will be discussed.
After completing this unit, students will be able to: identify an appropriate statistical method for testing associations with a categorical and a continuous outcome; conduct descriptive and univariable regression analyses using standard statistical software; build multivariable linear and logistic models for measurg association of a variable with an outcome after accounting for other variables and confounders; interpret the output of regression analyses from standard statistical software and present the results in research papers and project reports; evaluate statistical results presented in epidemiology journals (such as Preventive Veterinary Medicine) and identify clustering in epidemiological data and have basic skills to account for clustering while analysing hierarchical data.

Completing the research project will enable you to execute research in a professional and ethical manner. A six credit point project should equate to at least 150 hours work.

Completing the research project will enable you to execute research in a professional and ethical manner. A 12 credit point project should equate to at least 300 hours work.