3. DESCRIPTIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY

Question 1

Are age-specific distributions of disease incidence linear or multimodal?

Answer 1

can be either

linear trend - incidence of cancer

mulitmodal (having several peaks in incidence) - TB at one age and again at another age

Question 2

What are latency effects?

Answer 2

age effects on mortality may reflect the long latency period between environmental exposures and subsequent development of disease

Question 3

What is the biologic clock phenomenon?

Answer 3

the waning of the immune system that may result in increased susceptibility to disease, or may trigger appearance of conditions believed to have genetic basis (alzheimers)

Question 4

What does evaluating variation in disease frequency allow us to do?

Answer 4

identify high risk populations

prioritize public health resources

generate hypotheses about disease causation

Question 5

What is the 4 criteria for the quality and utility of epidemiologic data?

Answer 5

1. nature of the data - source of data
2. availability of the data - access to the data
3. completeness of population coverage - Representative, generalizable, and thorough
4. strengths vs. limitations - the utility of the data for various types of research

Question 6

What are factors inherent in data that may limit its usefulness?

Answer 6

incomplete diagnostic information

case duplication

Question 7

What is the privacy act of 1974?

Answer 7

prohibits the release of confidential data without the consent of the individual

Question 8

What is the freedom of information act (FOIA)?

Answer 8

mandates the release of government information to the public, except for personal and medical files

Question 9

What is the public health service act?

Answer 9

protects confidentiality of information collected by some federal agencies (NCHS)

Question 10

What are statistics derived from the vital registration system?

Answer 10

mortality statistics

birth statistics: certificates of birth and fetal death

Question 11

Is mortality data nearly complete in the U.S.? Why?

Answer 11

yes, because most deaths are unlikely to be unreported

Question 12

What are some of the limitation of mortality data?

Answer 12

exact cause of death may be unclear

lack of standardization of diagnostic criteria

stigma associated with certain diseases (like HIV/AIDS) that may lead to inaccurate reporting

errors in coding/changes in coding