Epidemiology: The Basic Science of Public Health

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About Course

Epidemiology is a core public health science that investigates the distribution and determinants of health and disease conditions in populations.

It examines the “who, what, when, where, and why” of health problems, looking at patterns and trends in disease occurrence

Course Content

What Is Epidemiology?
Epidemiology is the branch of medical science that investigates all the factors that determine the presence or absence of diseases and disorders. Epidemiological research helps us to understand how many people have a disease or disorder, if those numbers are changing, and how the disorder affects our society and our economy.

What Is Epidemiology

Planning and conducting a survey
Epidemiological surveys use various study designs and range widely in size. At one extreme a case-control investigation may include fewer than 50 subjects, while at the other, some large longitudinal studies follow up many thousands of people for several decades.

Frequency Measures
A measure of central location provides a single value that summarizes an entire distribution of data. In contrast, a frequency measure characterizes only part of the distribution.

Morbidity Frequency Measures
Morbidity has been defined as any departure, subjective or objective, from a state of physiological or psychological well-being. In practice, morbidity encompasses disease, injury, and disability.

Mortality Frequency Measures Mortality rate
A mortality rate is a measure of the frequency of occurrence of death in a defined population during a specified interval. Morbidity and mortality measures are often the same mathematically; it’s just a matter of what you choose to measure, illness or death.

Measures of Public Health Impact
A measure of public health impact is used to place the association between an exposure and an outcome into a meaningful public health context. Whereas a measure of association quantifies the relationship between exposure and disease, and thus begins to provide insight into causal relationships, measures of public health impact reflect the burden that an exposure contributes to the frequency of disease in the population.

Measures of Association
The key to epidemiologic analysis is comparison. Occasionally you might observe an incidence rate among a population that seems high and wonder whether it is actually higher than what should be expected based on, say, the incidence rates in other communities.

Reading epidemiological reports
Epidemiological methods are widely applied in medical research, and even doctors who do not themselves carry out surveys will find that their clinical practice is influenced by epidemiological observations.

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