The Foodborne Outbreak Challenge—Using Experiential Learning to Foster Interdisciplinary Training Among Students on Foodborne Disease Outbreak Investigations

The Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence aim to develop novel learning methods to educate and train the future public health workforce to investigate foodborne outbreaks. The Foodborne Outbreak Challenge (FOC) was a one‐day event hosted by the Colorado Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence at the Colorado School of Public Health. The FOC incorporated experiential, problem‐based, and interdisciplinary pedagogies from case studies, simulation exercises, and public health case competitions, to deliver a novel learning experience that met the training needs of a multidisciplinary foodborne outbreak response team with diverse skills sets. The event received positive feedback, and participants demonstrated knowledge gain. Event materials are available for other institutions to use.     

Seasonal coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2: effects of preexisting immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Although the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is still ongoing, vaccination rates are rising slowly and related treatments and drugs are being developed. At the same time, there is increasing evidence of preexisting immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in humans, mainly consisting of preexisting antibodies and immune cells (including T cells and B cells). The presence of these antibodies is mainly due to the seasonal prevalence of four common coronavirus types, especially OC43 and HKU1. The accumulated relevant evidence has suggested that the target of antibodies is mainly the S2 subunit of S protein, followed by evolutionary conservative regions such as the nucleocapsid (N) protein. Additionally, preexisting memory T and B cells are also present in the population. Preexisting antibodies can help the body protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection, reduce the severity of COVID-19, and rapidly increase the immune response post-infection. These multiple effects can directly affect disease progression and even the likelihood of death in certain individuals. Besides the positive effects, preexisting immunity may also have negative consequences, such as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) and original antigenic sin (OAS), the prevalence of which needs to be further established. In the future, more research should be focused on evaluating the role of preexisting immunity in COVID-19 outcomes, adopting appropriate policies and strategies for fighting the pandemic, and vaccine development that considers preexisting immunity.     

实践与探索:刍议河南省疾控中心收文运转工作

本文系统介绍河南省疾控中心收文运转工作的现状、存在的问题,并在此基础上提出改进建议.