At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in living memory, the global population got a crash course in public health, the processes of outbreak response, and all the terminology that goes along with it. In the race to digest what was happening, public health processes and roles were not always explained well and terms were often misused, revealing how much still needed to be learned.

The Outbreak Atlas, a new book aimed at “armchair epidemiologists” and public health professionals alike, aims to clarify and demystify outbreak preparedness, response, and recovery, with the help of case studies from disease outbreaks across the globe.

GHN spoke with co-authors Rebecca Katz, a professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Mackenzie Moore, a PhD candidate and Wellcome Trust Scholar at University of Edinburgh, about their quest to make outbreak knowledge accessible to all.