Emergency Preparedness and Response: Online Training Course

CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health is proud to announce a new online course for federal, state, and local public health and other health professionals. The course highlights preparedness and response resources and tools specific to the field of reproductive health in emergencies. 

Women of reproductive age (aged 15-44 years), including pregnant and postpartum women, may experience special risks and needs for public health and medical services when disasters and some infectious diseases strike. This course is designed to help address those needs, and includes practice exercises, describes challenges in surveillance of this population, and contains CDC resources about prophylaxis and treatment of pregnant and postpartum women for selected infectious diseases.

Course Goal: After completing this course, learners should be able to effectively respond to the needs of women of reproductive age during and after a disaster.

Target Audience: This course has been designed for health care professionals in community or public health settings, state and local epidemiologists, emergency preparedness personnel, and other public health staff interested in reproductive health in emergency response.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, you should be able to

1. Recognize the effects of post-disaster events and selected infectious diseases on women of reproductive age (WRA), especially pregnant and postpartum women.
2. Describe post-disaster challenges in surveillance of WRA.
3. Use assessments, clinical guidance, and public health surveillance tools in emergency preparedness and response to WRA.

Course Structure: Each section of this course is designed to be completed in consecutive order. Supplemental learning materials are provided throughout the course.

Required Time: We estimate that it will take 60 minutes to complete the course.

Access: This web-based activity is designed to increase knowledge and change competency of emergency preparedness and response related to reproductive health, with special emphasis on the needs of pregnant and postpartum women, practices and strategies.  The course provides learners the opportunity of obtaining Continuing Education Units (CEU), Continuing Medical Education (CME) or Continuing Nurses Education (CNE); more information about accreditation statements can be found here [PDF - 305KB]. The course is offered through CDC TRAIN, a comprehensive catalog of public health learning products.

Learn more about the Reproductive Health in Emergency Preparedness and Response Course.