Experience-Based Learning for Contact Tracers

SOC 370:  Experience-Based Learning for Contact Tracers

No pre-requisites are required

Course Description and Overview

Local and state health departments across the country have been rolling out efforts to stem the spread of coronavirus by tracing contacts of individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19.  Your job as a Contact Tracer is monumentally important. Beyond the communication, technical, and casework job skills and training you will receive, we believe your service as a Contact Tracer can provide a powerful learning experience.  And this course aims to enhance your learning by providing social, psychological, cross-cultural, and community-based perspectives.

As you take this 3-credit course, you will interact with and gain support from peers and have on-going opportunities to practice and improve your engagement, problem-solving, and ‘people-skills.’ You will also learn about how your work as a Contact Tracer fits into historical and global challenges to address pandemics and serves public health needs. Taken together, these skills and broadened perspectives will help you to reflect upon, critically evaluate, and add meaning to your experiences and effectiveness in your work as Contact Tracers while being transferable to your academic and professional pursuits beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

In this fully online course, you will: 

• Read articles and view videos and other learning resources pertinent to your work as Contact Tracers (There will be no cost to you for learning materials.) 
• Participate in weekly discussions among fellow Contact Tracers to “process” your experiences of doing this work by sharing stories, supporting each other around successes and challenges, and attempting to put aspects of this work in context—that is, to make sense of it and draw meaning from the experience--by referring to readings and other learning materials supplied in the course.
• Keep a diary/journal for reflections about your work being Contact Tracer
• Write a final paper and/or present a final project

Students successfully completing this course will:

1. Gain foundational knowledge about public health’s role in dealing with pandemics

2. Demonstrate increased understanding of the role and practice of Contact Tracers during the COVID-19 pandemic, to highlight and address the complexities and challenges posed in the job.

3. Show they are familiar with and sensitive to social, cultural, economic and other demographic factors that affect health care and health outcomes, particularly as these impact contact tracing efforts

4. Have increased awareness of the importance of culturally-competent interpersonal communication skills and be able to apply these skills to situations on the job as well as in their lives in general.

5. Be able to identify, self-assess, and apply skills and knowledge gained in Contact Tracer work to future academic and professional pursuits

Below is a list of topics that may become part of the course:

For more information or to register for the course, please contact: lianna.scull@cuny.edu