Menacing Microbes Unit Driving Question: How does a community get ready for an outbreak?

Controlling the Contagion Lesson Driving Question: How can we prevent the spread of disease? 

1. Watch a video from the CDC to learn about the different people and actions involved in an outbreak response. 

Have students watch this video from the CDC, Behind the Headline. As students watch the video, have them answer the following questions:

• Who is involved? (Suggested response: federal, state, and local partners; doctors, epidemiologists, statisticians, nurses, communicators, biologists, virologists, mosquito experts, and administrative staff)
• What do they do? (Suggested response: watch and analyze data, inform the community, look for patterns, safety training, respond to emergency calls, go to the outbreak site, lab testing)
• What skills do they need? (Suggested response: mapping, communication, analysis, reporting)
• What else do you notice?

As a class, discuss student responses to these questions.

2. Read to learn about different reactive policies and practices in response to an outbreak.

• Set the purpose of the reading by connecting the reading with their action plan. An example introduction to the reading could be: In the action plan you will create for your selected disease, you will need to include certain policies and procedures to stop the spread of disease once an outbreak has been identified. Today, you are going to read about some common policies and procedures that communities use to do this.
• Have students begin to read the article, Preventing and Containing Outbreaks.
• With a partner from their project group, have students read through the section of the article, “Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions.”
• After reading this section, ask your students: Will this work for your disease? Is this a realistic plan? Who is involved?
• Allow students to discuss in their project groups and orally respond to each question.

• Once students have had a chance to discuss and share their ideas, distribute the Action Plan Research worksheet for students to begin filling in the row for NPIs.
• With their same reading partners, students read the next section of the article, “Quarantine.”
• Introduce the term reactive, and add to the word wall started at the beginning of the unit. Tell students that reactive measures occur after the outbreak has started, and are intended to minimize the existing illness.
• With their same reading partners, students read the remainder of the article, continuing to stop, discuss, and add to their Action Plan Research worksheet after each section.

By the end of this activity, students will have reactive measures listed on their Action Plan Research worksheet. They will add additional proactive measures in subsequent activities.