HOUSTON – The University of Houston College of Medicine has started training the next generation of contact tracers and disease detectives to meet a growing need for mapping the web of people who’ve been exposed to a coronavirus patient.
The free Epidemiology Corps program is part of a collaboration between the University and the Houston and Harris County health departments.
Their goal is to help stop or reduce the spread of the virus by helping patients recall who they’ve been in contact with.
“This is how you find out how far corona has gone. Either it’s contained to the individual or it’s gone and spread five times over. I think that’s very important,” said UH biochemistry major Zainab Diwan.
Diwan said she plans to take the course.
“This is an opportune time for us as young people to shape our world differently. To do things differently so that we don’t see things like this in the future. If we do, we know how to handle it as a community," she said.
What is contact tracing
Contact tracers or disease detectives help COVID-19 patients recall everyone they’ve had close contact with in the days leading up to their positive test result. The contact tracers will then notify those people of their potential exposure and risk and ask them to isolate to reduce the spread of the virus.
Who can sign up
Students and staff members of the University of Houston can sign up to take this course. To sign up, click here.
What you will learn
- The basics of a pandemic
- The signs and symptoms of COVID-19
- Actions and requirements associated with the contact tracing process
- How to apply contact tracing protocols to a range of health scenarios.
About the course
The free program will only be available online and will consist of 12 learning hours. Participants will be asked to complete the course in four days.
Students will be eligible to earn course credit for taking the course and then complete internships with the Houston or Harris County Health Departments.
Will I be able to put the training to work?
Between the Houston and Harris County health departments, several thousand contact tracers are expected to be put to work.
The University says 4,000 contact tracers are expected to be hired in Texas by mid-May.
It is possible that other opportunities for contact tracing may become available in the Houston area, in the weeks and months ahead.