Exercise #4–Foodborne Illness Outbreak Investigation:
Open the Excel worksheet (“Exercise4.xlsx”) that I have provided. Thisis a list of MSPHstudents from the entering cohort of 2000 at Campbell University,which lists what each student ate at the new “Build-Your-Own Burrito Buffet” in the Ambulatory Care Center on August 10th, 2000, along with the symptoms that developed over the next twelve hours.
Your task is to classify each student as either a “case” or a “noncase”based on their symptoms, and enter "YES" or "NO" in the "Case?" column.
Then calculate the attack rates among students who did and did not each of the food items that were served. Next,for each of the foods, calculate the Rate Ratio(using the attack rates) between those who did and did not eat it.
Answer the following: Possible answers will be available on Blackboard to choose from.
1. What is the calculated rate ratio for Guacamole?
2. What is the calculated rate ratio for Rice?
3. What is the calculated rate ratio for cheese?
4. What is the calculated rate ratio for Pulled Pork?
5. Which fooditem was most likely to have caused the outbreak (Hint: use rate ratio).
Use Figure-1 below to answer questions 6-7
6. Which of the following sources of exposure is described by the epidemic curve above?
a. Continuous exposure source
b. Point exposure source
c. Propagated exposure source
d. Mixed exposure source
7. Which of the following is the best example of the exposure source in Figure-1?
a. Contaminated municipal water source
b. Factory polluting community with harmful gases
c. An outbreak among people attending social event
d. A person to person spread of Hepatitis A in Joe County
