Want a contact tracing job? Free online course from Johns Hopkins can get you started
Johns Hopkins University is offering a free online course to train people interested in coronavirus contact tracing jobs.
Contact tracing will be essential to reopening the U.S. in the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring an army of thousands of people to carry out the work, experts say. The course offered by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is intended to teach skills to this new workforce.
It’s already required for contact tracers in New York. The school and Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Health program hope it can teach others across the country, too.
“We hope the excellent content and easy accessibility of this virtual training program can contribute to achieving the speed and scale required to get the New York state program up and running,” Kelly Henning, a doctor and epidemiologist who leads the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Health program, said in a news release. “We believe it also can be useful for health departments around the country and around the world eager to aggressively expand contact tracing.”
The U.S. will need at least 100,000 contact tracers to slow the spread of COVID-19 and help reopen businesses, according to a Johns Hopkins University report.
“Contact tracing allows us to communicate with people infected with COVID-19, identify those who may have been exposed, and provide all of them with guidance to limit the spread of the disease,” the news release explained.
The approximately five-hour course offered through Coursera covers the science of the virus, contact tracing fundamentals, investigating cases, ethics and effective communications while tracing. The lead instructor is Emily Gurley, an infectious disease expert at the Bloomberg School.
Upon completion, a course certificate can be added to Linkedin profiles.
“This course will help everyone understand the basics of contact tracing,” Joshua M. Sharfstein, vice dean for Public Health and Community Engagement at the Bloomberg School, told McClatchy News. “The certificate should be helpful to those who want to demonstrate that they understand what a successful contact tracer does. We expect this certificate will be helpful in many areas.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Want a contact tracing job? Free online course from Johns Hopkins can get you started."