Developing and Applying an Evaluative Rubric to Support Continuing Education for Disease Intervention Professionals

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Infectious Disease Control
• Epidemiology

Background:

• The Certified in Disease Intervention (CDI) certification enhances community-level expertise in preventing infectious disease.
• Recertification and continuing education are crucial for maintaining CDI competencies.
• A need exists for a curated repository of high-quality training materials for CDI professionals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a systematic approach for identifying and evaluating online training resources for CDI professionals.
• To create a robust repository of vetted educational materials to support recertification and continuing education.
• To establish an evidence-informed rubric for assessing the quality of online training resources.

Main Methods:

• Interdisciplinary subject matter experts developed a systematic approach to identify and vet training resources.
• An evidence-informed rubric was created to assess multiple attributes of online training materials.
• Metadata tags were generated for populating a searchable database of curated resources.

Main Results:

• A robust repository of high-quality educational resources for disease intervention professionals was successfully curated.
• An evidence-informed rubric was developed, evaluating aspects like learning objectives, assessment, content timeliness, and accessibility.
• A list of evaluated resources with outcomes and metadata tags was compiled.

Conclusions:

• The developed repository provides valuable educational resources for Certified in Disease Intervention professionals.
• The systematic approach and evaluation rubric ensure the quality and relevance of training materials.
• Ongoing efforts are needed to expand the repository and update resources for disease intervention professionals in the U.S.