Frontline Field Epidemiology Training Programs as a Strategy to Improve Disease Surveillance and Response.

Since 1980, Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETPs) have trained highly qualified field epidemiologists to work for ministries of health (MOH) around the world. However, the 2013-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which primarily affected Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, demonstrated a lack of field epidemiologists at the local levels. Trained epidemiologists at these levels could have detected the Ebola outbreak earlier.

Knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of school nurses and personnel and associations with nonmedical immunization exemptions.

Objectives: We studied school personnel involved in the review of student's immunization status to determine whether personnel training, immunization-related knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, use of alternative medicine, and sources of vaccine information were associated with the vaccination status of school children.

Methods: Surveys were mailed to a stratified and random sample of 1000 schools in Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Washington. School personnel reported their training and perceptions of disease susceptibility/severity, vaccine efficacy/safety, key immunization beliefs, use of alternative medicine, confidence in organizations, sources, and credibility of vaccine information, and the rates of vaccine exemptors in their schools.