This toolkit contains two tutorials: Just-in-Time Trainings for Managing Disease Outbreak Information and Simple Steps to Create a Health Assessment.

The Syndromic Surveillance for Epidemiological Investigation - Response Protocols for Disease Detection guides the target audience of both public heath and hospital workers in the understanding and development of response protocols to surveillance alerts. Content is a Web-based course that introduces the concept of response protocols and guides users on developing and using response protocols through a series of modules. A learning self-assessment is provided in the form of interactive scenarios prompting response to questions and providing answers with explanation. The product's content was tested at the 2009 Public Health Preparedness Summit through classroom didactic and evaluation forms. The requirements were vetted through CDC BioSense and local health department epidemiology reviews.

Using ESSENCE IV — A Self-Paced Training Course is a CD-ROM training tool that provides interactive guidance to public health and healthcare providers in the understanding and use of surveillance software system, Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics or ESSENCE. It contains an objectives-based learning assessment that will introduce the software and highlight its values and applications through a series of modules: Module 1 describes the purpose of the software and its importance as a syndromic surveillance system; Module 2 navigates users through the application and learn the various functions of each page; Module 3 educates the user on the various statistical functions and algorithms employed in the system; Module 4 explores the use of alerts and queries in daily surveillance; and Module 5 applies the user's training to the investigation of “real-life” public health scenarios. The training tool incorporates the guidance and expertise provided by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in the development of this product.