Assessing Health Risks in Populations

Question 1

What does Epidemiological research focus on ?

Answer 1

• Identification of risk factors & risk assessment
• Planning & evaluating public health interventions to reduce the incidence of disease in the population

Question 2

What can risk assessment help with ?

Answer 2

• It can help with resource management

Question 3

What are risk factors and protective factors ?

Answer 3

• Risk factors : factors that are statistically associated with the increased risk of a health condition
• Protective factors : factors that are statistically associated with the decreased risk of a health condition

Question 4

What are some measures of association ?

Answer 4

• Correlation coefficient
• Relative Risk (RR)
• Odds ratio (OR)
• Risk difference (RD)
• Attributable risk (AR)

Question 5

What is relative risk ?

Answer 5

• The ratio of the incidence of an outcome in the presence of an exposure to the incidence of an outcome in the absence of that exposure

Question 6

What are the 9 criteria of causality by Austin Bradford Hill’s ?

Answer 6

1. Strength of association
2. Consistency
3. Specificity
4. Temporal relationship
5. Biological gradient
6. Plausibility
7. Coherence
8. Experiment
9. Analogy

Question 7

How does the strength of association effect casualty ?

Answer 7

• Evidence of a strong association between the exposure and the outcome is a required criterion for causality

Question 8

How can consistency effect causality ?

Answer 8

• relationships that are confirmed in multiple studies are more likely to be true , especially if shown across different populations and with a different study design

Question 9

How can specificity effect causality ?

Answer 9

• easier to support causation when associations are specific

Question 10

How can temporal relationship effect causality ?

Answer 10

• if a factor is believed to cause a disease then the factor must necessarily always come before the outcome

Question 11

How does plausibility & coherence effect causality ?

Answer 11

-Firstly the observed association agrees with currently accepted understanding of pathological and biological processes
- secondly the causal mechanism must not contradict what is known about the biology of the disease