First Year Odyssey Seminar: Ebola
FYOS 1001 – Spring 2017
The 2013-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa was a public health emergency of international concern. This event highlights the interconnections among clinical medicine, social forces and culture, government, poverty, and ecology that give rise to emerging infectious diseases. In this seminar, students studied this event from multiple points of view. Students considered how a multi-disciplinary perspective provides a richer understanding of the development of the epidemic and investigated how social, ecological, and geographic conditions both created a context for the Ebola virus to emerge in West Africa and enabled sustained transmission. This event provides a focal point for considering the role of emerging infectious diseases in public health.