Core Learning Objective clipboard check icon

Identify Strategies to Reduce Spread of COVID-19

Identify Strategies to Reduce Spread of COVID-19

Sample Training Plan

Updated Oct. 21, 2020
Core Learning Objectives for Everyone
Related Pages
On This Page

For this section, self-paced online training (e.g., curated reading list, videos, or eLearning course) is suggested. Inclusion of a post-test is strongly recommended.

Content describing non-CDC tools on this site is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to indicate endorsement, actual or implied, of the tools. Additionally, information on this site is provided “as is,” for users to evaluate and make their own determination as to their effectiveness.

Topic areas and training resources

Background on COVID-19

COVID-19 disease-specific information

Ways to prevent spread of COVID-19

Training catalog

Making Contact: A Training for COVID-19 Contact Tracers: The Basics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) – Lesson 1

Topic areas: Background, signs/symptoms, general precautions, testing, prevention and control, ways to reduce spread

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1091302/compilationexternal icon
  • Target audience: Contact tracers and new case investigators
  • Description: Contact tracers must understand the basics of coronavirus disease transmission in order to perform contact tracing and disease intervention activities effectively. Lesson one (The Basics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)) will provide an overview of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), including its incubation and infectious period, symptoms, and how to prevent it. Please note, lessons must be completed in order from one to four.

Lesson 1 learning objectives:

  1. Describe what COVID-19 is
  2. Describe how to prevent COVID-19 transmission
  3. List symptoms of COVID-19
  4. Define social distancing, quarantine, and isolation
  5. Describe the incubation and infectious period
Top of Page

Emerging respiratory viruses, including COVID-19: methods for detection, prevention, response and control

Topic area: Background

Learning objectives:

  1. Describe the nature of emerging respiratory viruses, how to detect and assess an outbreak, strategies for preventing and controlling outbreaks due to novel respiratory viruses
  2. Describe strategies that should be used to communicate risk and engage communities to detect, prevent and respond to the emergence of a novel respiratory virus
Top of Page

COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Topic area: Background, signs/symptoms, testing, prevention and control, general precautions

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1091439/external icon
  • Target audience: General public
  • Description: The COVID-19 crisis has created an unprecedented need for contact tracing across the country, requiring thousands of people to learn key skills quickly. The job qualifications for contact tracing positions differ throughout the country and the world, with some new positions open to individuals with a high school diploma or equivalent. In this introductory course, students will learn about the science of SARS-CoV-2 , including the infectious period, the clinical presentation of COVID-19, and the evidence for how SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted from person-to-person and why contact tracing can be such an effective public health intervention. Students will learn about how contact tracing is done, including how to build rapport with cases, identify their contacts, and support both cases and their contacts to stop transmission in their communities. The course will also cover several important ethical considerations around contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. Finally, the course will identify some of the most common barriers to contact tracing efforts — along with strategies to overcome them.

Learning objectives:

  1. Describe the natural history of SARS-CoV-2 , including the infectious period, the presentation of COVID-19, and evidence for how it is transmitted.
  2. Define an infectious contact and timeline for public health intervention through contact tracing.
  3. Demonstrate the utility of case investigation and contact tracing, identify common barriers, and possible strategies to overcome them.
  4. Present some ethical considerations around contact tracing, isolation and quarantine.
Top of Page

Every Contact Counts: Contact Tracing for Public Health Professionals

Topic area: Background, signs/symptoms, testing, prevention and control, general precautions

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1091492/external icon
  • Target audience: Public health professionals who are new to contact tracing; Volunteers with a basic understanding of public health
  • Description: Contact tracing is an evidence-based way to slow the spread of infectious disease. It is the process of interviewing individuals who have been infected with a disease, identifying close contacts that they may have unknowingly exposed, and providing those contacts with the information needed to monitor their own health and prevent the continued spread of the illness. Learning effective contact tracing practices can help prevent further spread of COVID-19. This 90-minute online course developed by the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice in partnership with the Kansas Health Foundation will rapidly train public health workers in the subject of contact tracing. Within this module, you will learn more about what contact tracing is, why it is an effective tool to slow the spread of COVID-19, and how to practice contact tracing successfully

Learning Objectives:

  1. Define contact tracing.
  2. Describe the important role contact tracers have in protecting the public.
  3. Identify criteria that determine whether someone is a potential contact.
  4. Identify the key components of a successful contact tracing interview.
  5. Apply principles of successful contact tracing interviews to a mock interview scenario.
  6. Conduct contact tracing interviews with professionalism and sensitivity.
Top of Page

COVID-19 Public Health Strategy Basic Concepts – NDPHTN

Topic areas: Epidemiology and surveillance principles, Signs/symptoms, testing, prevention and control, general precautions

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1090675/external icon
  • Target audience: Public health professionals
  • Description: Provides a basic background to the COVID-19 pandemic and describe the important steps to flatten the curve of COVID-19. Also provides an overview of crisis communication strategies and coordinating crisis response.

Learning objectives:

  1. Review coronavirus history
  2. Review COVID-19 characteristics
  3. Discuss 6 concepts to flatten the curve
  4. Review the 10 social distancing recommendations
  5. Review COVID-19 testing concepts
  6. Discuss how cocooning protects high-risk individuals
  7. Discuss key concepts of crisis communications in pandemics
Top of Page

Boots on the Ground Part 1: Foundational Epidemiology

Topic area: Epidemiology and surveillance principles

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1076135external icon
  • Target audience: Public health professionals and others without a background in epidemiology
  • Description: Provides basic principles of epidemiology and public health practice. Includes key terms used in epidemiologic and explains types of epidemiology research.

Learning objectives:

  1. Define epidemiology
  2. Describe the key factors impacting the incidence and spread of disease, injury, or health outcome (i.e. agent, host, environment)
  3. Describe basic key terms in epidemiology
  4. Describe distribution of disease, injury, or health outcomes and understand bias, validity, and reliability in assessing public health problems
  5. Identify bias, validity, and reliability
  6. Identify research methods
Top of Page

COVID-19 Contact Investigation Training

Topic area: Signs/symptoms

Learning objectives:

  1. Discuss COVID-19 background
  2. Discuss case investigation tools
  3. Identify investigation interview techniques
  4. Discuss types of contact follow-up
  5. Identify COVID case and contact investigation resources
Top of Page

COVID-19 Real-Time Legal Response: Focus on Quarantine, Isolation, and Other Social Distancing Powers

Topic area: Prevention and control, general precautions

  • Register: https://www.train.org/cdctrain/course/1090658/external icon
  • Target audience: Public health professionals
  • Description: Following a brief series of COVID-19 legal updates, this real-time session will focus on an array of social distancing legal responses among federal, state, and local authorities, notably quarantine, isolation, school and other closures, and proposed “lockdowns.” After an initial presentation, your questions and comments will be addressed.

Learning objectives:

  1. Assess the legal bases for social distancing in response to COVID-19
  2. Understand the core legal steps to engage quarantine and isolation
  3. Consider varied powers of federal, state and local governments to institute school or other closures
  4. Explore the constitutional limits of proposed lockdowns and other aggressive social distancing measures
Top of Page

COVID-19 Infection Prevention and Control in the Household (Microlearning)

Topic area: General precautions

  • Register: https://www.train.org/main/course/1090934/external icon
  • Target audience: General public health staff
  • Description: This micro learning is designed to take 15 minutes. You will learn about instructions to give your patients who are taking care of a probable or confirmed case of COVID-19 in the household.

Learning objectives:

  1. Identify COVID-19 infection prevention and control measures for the household
Top of Page

CDC Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) webpages

Topic areas: Epidemiology and surveillance principles

Topic area: Signs/symptoms

Topic area: Update on current emergency response

Topic area: General precautions

Topic area: Prevention and control

Topic area: Testing

Last Updated Oct. 21, 2020
Content source: National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Division of Viral Diseases