Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1186/s12889-024-19307-x

Publication Title

BMC Public Health

Volume

24

Issue

1

Pages

1793 (1-8)

Abstract

Background

Tick-borne diseases are a growing public health threat in the United States. Despite the prevalence and rising burden of tick-borne diseases, there are major gaps in baseline knowledge and surveillance efforts for tick vectors, even among vector control districts and public health agencies. To address this issue, an online tick training course (OTTC) was developed through the Southeastern Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (SECOEVBD) to provide a comprehensive knowledge base on ticks, tick-borne diseases, and their management.

Methods

The OTTC consisted of training modules covering topics including tick biology, tick identification, tick-borne diseases, and public health, personal tick safety, and tick surveillance. The course was largely promoted to vector control specialists and public health employees throughout the Southeastern US. We collected assessment and survey data on participants to gauge learning outcomes, perceptions of the utility of knowledge gained, and barriers and facilitators to applying the knowledge in the field.

Results

The OTTC was successful in increasing participants’ baseline knowledge across all course subject areas, with the average score on assessment increasing from 62.6% (pre-course) to 86.7% (post-course). More than half of participants (63.6%) indicated that they would definitely use information from the course in their work. Barriers to using information identified in the delayed assessment included lack of opportunities to apply skills (18.5%) and the need for additional specialized training beyond what the OTTC currently offers (18.5%), while the main facilitator (70.4%) for applying knowledge was having opportunities at work, such as an existing tick surveillance program.

Conclusions

Overall, this OTTC demonstrated capacity to improve knowledge in a necessary and underserved public health field, and more than half of participants use or plan to use the information in their work. The geographic reach of this online resource was much larger than simply for the Southeastern region for which it was designed, suggesting a much broader need for this resource. Understanding the utility and penetrance of training programs such as these is important for refining materials and assessing optimal targets for training.

Rights

© The Authors 2024.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Data Availability

Article states: "De-identified data can be requested directly from the authors, subject to the terms of the IRB as approved. Details of questions for knowledge assessment used in the online course can be requested from the authors. Specifically, data requests must be directed to Sadie J. Ryan (sjryan@ufl.edu)."

Original Publication Citation

Lippi, C. A., Gaff, H. D., White, A. L., & Ryan, S. J. (2024). Assessing the value and knowledge gains from an online tick identification and tick-borne disease management course for the Southeastern United States. BMC Public Health, 24(1), 1-8, Article 1793. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19307-x

ORCID

0000-0002-4034-2684 (Gaff)

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