Certificate Requirements
The curriculum will consist of five courses. Students are required to take one core GPPI course and one core MICB course. Of the three remaining courses, students must take at least one in either Microbiology or GPPI.
Courses at the Department of Microbiology
Core
MICB 515: Microbiology of Biological Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases
This course will cover NIH bioterrorism agents (categories A-C), which can be utilized as biological weapons. The microbiology of these agents will focus on structure, pathology, and virulence factors. The immune response to these agents will be presented. Viral agents will include Variola and hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola and Lassa). Bacterial agents will include B. anthracis, Yersinia pestis (plague), and Francisella tularensis (tularemia). Emerging infectious disease threats such as Nipah virus and Hantavirus will also be covered.
Electives
MICB 517: Bioterrorism
This course will examine the use of biological weapons. Terrorism in its modern form will be discussed as well as which biological agents are most likely to be used, their techniques for deployment, and their prevention and control. Specific disease agents to be covered will include anthrax, plague, botulism, smallpox, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
MICB 519: Sociological Perspectives on Biodefense
This course will critically examine political and organizational controversies about recognizing and defending against biological threats to human well-being. The first third of the course will study historical case studies of biological threat, including threats from food and infectious diseases such as cholera and the flu. This section of the course will demonstrate how biosurveillance, the systematic identification and acknowledgement of a biothreat, depends upon broad social, economic and political factors as well as its biological characteristics. This section of the course will close with a detailed review of the pandemic influenza plans of the government. The second third of the course examines the debate about reforming our government bureaucracy responsible for responding to biothreats, including but mot limited to terrorists. Why did we not recognize the emerging threat of the 9/11 attacks? What principles should we apply in reforming our intelligence and homeland defense organizations? How should we think of natural biothreats from an intelligence perspective? The course concludes with close examination of sociological perspectives on designing effective organizations for responding to threats including biothreats using the government's pandemic flu plans as a case study. Why do organizational failures occur even in organizations capable of responding to novel threats and unanticipated events? We will close the course by examining how one society responded to a major biological catastrophe, the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in. By the end of this course, Students should gain an appreciation of the fundamentally political character of biodefense.
MICB 525: Homeland Security 2015
This course will delve into the future on what homeland security will be like in year 2015. Current assessments and future predictions will be analyzed. Threats, trends, and implications for homeland security in 2015 will be examined.
MICB 550: Pathogenesis and Therapy of Bioterror-Related Diseases
Micro-organisms and toxins that could be employed by terrorists as biological weapons have been ranked in the order of their potential threat as Category A, B and C agents by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This course will examine the mechanisms by which the most virulent (Category A) and certain Category B and C agents cause severe illness in humans and laboratory animals and will review current approaches to the treatment of these diseases. Students enrolling for this course should have completed MICB-515 or have an equivalent background in biology and immunology.
Courses at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute
Core
PPOL 740: Management of Policy Analysis
The objective of this course is to make students better producers and consumers of analyses and evaluations of public policy, as well as better decision-makers. The course does not focus on methodology per se. Rather, the focus is on the role of managers and executives in seeking and organizing the gathering of systematic information to address crises as well as more routine policy problems.
Electives
PPOL 527: Risk Analysis
This course focuses on human health risk assessment and covers the following set of interrelated steps that are used in assessing environmental risks: hazard identification, dose-response, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Current key topics in the evolution of risk assessment are covered, such as shifting emphasis from risk identification to risk characterization, from cancer effects to an inclusive focus on other diseases and deficits, and from dose-response to a greater emphasis on mechanisms and modes of action at the cellular and genetic level. The course also features discussions of cascading conservatism, bias towards synthetic over natural risks, and the difficulties of conducting epidemiological studies. The course will emphasize examples from the U.S. EPA, but some attention will also be paid to how other government agencies assess risks.
PPOL 612: Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
This course investigates how various aspects of federalism, intergovernmental relations, and multi-tiered government affect public action. The first part of the course will be dedicated to the normative, theoretical, and historical content of federalism and intergovernmental relations in the United States and other countries. For example, how should federal and state responsibilities be allocated? Should federal mandates and federal transfers go hand in hand? Should the federal government rely more on persuasion and less on coercion? The second part of the course will be dedicated to the workings of federalism and intergovernmental relations in different policy areas, including homeland security.
PPOL 648: Epidemiology for Public Policy
This course will provide an introduction to the basic quantitative and qualitative methods of epidemiology, and illustrate their use in public health practice and the development of health and environmental policy. Methodological topics will include the dynamics of disease transmission, the measurement of mortality and morbidity, community health assessment, disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, population-based screening programs, epidemiologic study design and analysis, and ethical issues in epidemiology. Methods will be illustrated through a series of in-depth policy examples, including health disparities, HIV/AIDS surveillance, prenatal HIV screening, quality of health care, privacy and confidentiality of health information, smallpox vaccination policy, syndromic surveillance, SARS, and public health preparedness for bioterrorism.
PPOL 6xx: Homeland Security
This course provides students with an overview of the policy, management, and structural challenges associated with implementing U.S. homeland security programs and initiatives.
PPOL 6xx: Homeland Security Policy and Technology Management
This course explores the role of technology in homeland security: how technology and technological development creates dangers or opportunities for securing the homeland, both in the United States, and comparatively in the experience of other countries. Students will learn about the technologies that pose homeland security threats, and the choices, hurdles, and barriers adversaries consider in wielding technology to threaten the homeland. Students will also learn about the types and roles of technology in securing the homeland and responding to threats' the investment decisions governments must make, and the interests that must be balanced in making technology decisions.
