As one of the very few online medical courses in veterinary epidemiology that is available, this course is highly suitable for veterinary researchers with an interest in epidemiology, who want to understand the concepts of epidemiology and apply these concepts in data analysis. It is taught by epidemiologists from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, and forms part of the MSc Epidemiology program of the UMC Utrecht and Utrecht University.
This course teaches study design for veterinary epidemiological research, focusing on those
aspects specific to animal health. You will encounter typical confounders in veterinary
epidemiology, such as breed and parity, but also get to work with clustered sampling, such as
by farm, and diagnostics without a gold standard. During the course, you will learn that these
concepts are relevant for human epidemiology as well.
You will learn to apply epidemiological know-how and statistical methods during hands-on
computer practical and lectures.
Veterinary Epidemiology is broad concept therefore there were multiple online courses created. These courses can be ordered in a bundle. This bundle consists out of 3 online courses: Study Design in Veterinary Epidemiology, Epidemiology of Animal Infectious Diseases and Hands-on Veterinary Epidemiology. The bundle offers 20% discount, read more about it here.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
• Understand the specific issues in veterinary epidemiology, such as clustered occurrence of disease, specific veterinary confounders, such as breed and parity
• Be able to analyse a veterinary data set following a structured approach
• Understand and be able to describe study designs for diagnostic test evaluation with and without gold standard
• Recognize sampling schemes for prevalence estimation and to determine freedom-from-disease, and do power-calculations for basic sampling designs
• Disease causation
• Analysis of Veterinary Data
• Study Design
• Diagnostic Testing
• Diagnostic test evaluation without gold standard
• Sampling
To successfully complete this course, you need pass the final exam. The exam will consist of a series of essay questions. The exam focusses on insight. There will be a part similar to some of the questions in practical LU2 and LU4 (30%), and insight questions on the other topics; Study design and Sampling (30%), Diagnostic tests (30%) and Disease causation (10%).
The exams are, by default, online using online proctoring. If you wish to take the exam on-site in Utrecht, the Netherlands, this is possible as well.
Exam edition April 2025
The exam will take place on April 25th, 2025 from 14:15 – 16:15 CET. The re-examination will take place on June 13th, 2025 from 14:15 – 16:15 CET. Note: these times might be subject to change. The exact time and place will be announced as soon as possible in the learning environment and any changes announced there will overrule the information here.
To enroll in this course, you need:
• Completed course Modern Methods in Data Analysis (or equivalent course)
• Basic Skill in R (or in another computer language such as Python or C++)
• Sufficient proficiency in English reading and writing
For this course, the following book is used:
‘Veterinary Epidemiology: An Introduction’ by Dirk Pfeiffer, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-4051-7694-1
The book by Dirk Pfeiffer is also available as a PDF file for participants in this course. You can download the book in the learning activities.
For further and more in-depth reading, we recommend:
‘Veterinary Epidemiologic Research, Second Edition’ by Ian Dohoo, Wayne Martin & Henrik Stryhn (2010) – ISBN-13: 978-0-919013-60-5
For Dutch speaking students we additionally advise:
‘ Een inleiding tot de veterinaire epidemiologie’’ by Jeroen Dewulf (2017) – ISBN: 9789463440387
We offer discounts for participants from Low- and Lower-middle-income Countries. Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht employees and students are eligible for a 10% discount. Unfortunately, we don’t offer any scholarships.
No, there aren’t any set times you should be online as it is an asynchronous course. All the web lectures are already pre-recorded. However there will be deadlines each week (during the week as well on weekends). Each week consists of approximately 14 study hours. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log in several times per week. Furthermore, you should be aware that the teacher and the e-moderator are off on weekends.
No, this is not possible because the course contains group assignments, so you can’t work ahead. Each week, a new learning unit will be made available. This means that not all the learning units are open simultaneously. Additionally, you can’t catch up on the course because there are deadlines to meet every week.
After enrollment, you will receive a confirmation email. A week before the course officially starts, you will receive an email with more detailed information and planning.
If you have ordered a course and paid immediately, you will receive an email with your login details. Sometimes, this email ends up in your spam folder. If you already have an existing account, simply log in to our learning environment. The course you just ordered will be visible in your account.
If you paid by invoice, you will receive your login credentials as soon as the invoice is paid. If the course is starting soon and you haven’t received your login details, please reach out to us at info@elevatehealth.eu to inquire about the payment status.
When you have completed all the assignments or have finished the exam with a good grade, you will receive an official certificate from Utrecht University. All academic certificates issued by Utrecht University will be sent by mail to the address registered in your account. Since these certificates are official documents, they cannot be sent by email.
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