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One Health VBD Hub Training 2026

1 Introduction

1.1 Learning objectives

By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:

  1. Generate accessible visualisations to communicate complex data to different audiences and stakeholders.
  2. Formulate data-driven hypotheses from effective data visualisations.
  3. Build collaborative, professional connections within the VBD community.

1.2 Prerequisites

Before participating in this workshop, you should have:

  • Foundational knowledge of programming in R and RStudio, including running code, installing packages, and working within scripts.
  • Some experience of formatting datasets in R, such as importing .csv files and viewing dataframes.
  • Basic understanding of VBD biology, including common vectors and pathogen transmission.

1.3 Training Plan

1.3.1 Pre- live session content

This is to be completed ahead of the Live Session. Content will be available on the Hub under Learning Resources.

The VBD Hub Forum is available for support and networking.

1.3.2 Live session

10:00 - 13:00 on Thursday 19th March, via Teams.

Content will be made available on the Hub under Learning Resources on the day of the Live Session.

1.3.3 Challenge Task

Multi-stage task to be completed independently after the Live Session. The stages will increase in difficulty and provide an opportunity to apply what you have learnt to real VBD datasets.

Content will be posted on the VBD Hub under Learning Resources on the day of the Live Session. The VBD Hub Forum will be available for support.

1.4 Navigating Course Content

Many of the tasks in this workshop will be in a workbook-style format and will walk you through how to code specific functions and models. We encourage you to type this code yourself to practice syntax and gain the most out of the content provided, rather than copying and pasting.

All the datasets in this workshop have been tidied and wrangled for you. This is so we can focus on the key themes within this session - effective visualisations and graphics. Raw data is also provided, and we recommend you take a look at the “before” and “after” to better understand the data we are working with.

All coding through this workshop will be done in Rstudio, a user friendly IDE (integrated development environment) for R language. Please ensure you have R and RStudio installed and updated ahead of the Live Session. If you do not already have R or RStudio installed, see here.

1.5 Available Materials & Support

If you need a quick reminder of basic coding in R, additional materials and cheat sheets can be found here:

If you need additional support through this workshop:

  • The Forum is a good place to discuss queries with fellow participants.
  • Demonstrators will be available to help during the Live Session.
  • During the Challenge Task, a specific discussion on the Forum will be open to ask demonstrators questions. One-to-one video support will also be available if required.
  • For technical support (e.g. trouble accessing content or joining the Teams link), please contact . This is not for coding or statistical support.

1.6 Installing Packages

This workshop will use several R packages throughout, please install these ahead of the Live Session.

Packages for this workshop:

  • ggplot2
  • tidyverse
  • lubridate

Reminder: To install packages in R, use the install.packages() command.

To install one package:

install.packages("ggplot2")

To install multiple packages:

install.packages(c("ggplot2", "dplyr", "tidyr"))