Health Emergency Response to a Pandemic: An Integrated Social Science Perspective

Unpack health emergency response

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented global crisis, causing wide scale disruptions. On this four-week course, you’ll discover the many lessons learned during the pandemic – from crisis governance to online misinformation on social media.

Delving into real-life case studies, you’ll learn to make sense of COVID-19 data and learn about behavioural and epidemiological modelling and various data visualisation techniques.

Guided by experts, you’ll understand the issues caused by the pandemic and the solutions to help better manage health emergencies.

Explore governance in pandemics

On both global and local levels, governance during the pandemic took on a role we have never seen before.

You’ll delve into crisis governance to gain an understanding of decision-making during this trying time.

You’ll also explore societal resilience in times of crisis and how you can strengthen your own crisis response.

Understand the importance of the medical supply chain

Securing a medical supply chain is imperative in a health emergency response such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

You’ll unpack the disruptions that occurred in the medical supply chains, how to ensure preparedness, and appropriately respond to such disruptions.

You’ll also learn how to successfully secure medical supply chains using innovative solutions such as unmanned-aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.

Learn how to prevent the spread of misinformation

Social media platforms played a significant role in the spread of misinformation during the pandemic. You’ll explore social media analytics to understand how this happened and learn to fact check on social media to identify misinformation.

By the end of the course, you’ll understand how to use the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to better prepare for future crises.

This course is designed for individuals and organisations responding to pandemics.

You could be a medical professional, a decision-maker in government, or a student aspiring to work in this context.

• Making sense of COVID data, models and their visualisation
• Welcome to the course!
• Introduction to Week 1
• Healthcare data
• Computational models and how to use them
• Visualisations of COVID-19 data and models
• Wrap-up of Week 1
• Governance in pandemics
• Introduction to Week 2
• Crisis Governance
• Societal resilience in times of crisis
• Using visual methods
• What can we learn from Covid-19 crisis governance?
• Wrap-up of Week 2
• Securing medical supply chains
• Introduction to Week 3
• Understanding medical supply chains
• Disruptions, preparedness, and response
• The last-mile delivery for securing medical supplies
• Impact of COVID-19 on the medical supply chain
• Wrap-up of Week 3
• Social media analytics of misinformation spread in pandemics
• Introduction to Week 4
• Understanding misinformation
• Social media analysis in misinformation research
• Source credibility and trust
• Trends and patterns of misinformation and fact-checking
• Wrap-up of Week 4
• Course wrap-up