Epidemiology and Public Health

Question 1

• Epidemiology

Answer 1

• Epidemiology: the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events (including disease), and the application of this study to the control of diseases and other health problems (Studying what is around people).

Question 2

• Outbreak

Answer 2

• Outbreak: a sudden rise in the incidence of a disease

Question 3

• Epidemiology triad

Answer 3

• Epidemiology triad: a model of how an infectious disease is spread. It consists of an agent, a host and an environment. The agent is the organism that does the infecting such as a virus or a parasite. The host is the organism that is being infected by the agent. The environment is the place and correct conditions for the agent and to come together with the host and infect it.

Question 4

• Endemic

Answer 4

• Endemic: occurrence of an infectious disease restricted or peculiar to a locality or region; Habitually present in human populations — Steady State

Question 5

• Epidemic

Answer 5

• Epidemic: occurrence of an infectious disease affecting or tending to affect an atypically large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time

Question 6

• Pandemic

Answer 6

• Pandemic: occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population

Question 7

• index case

Answer 7

• index case: The case that started the epidemic – may not know who this is until much, much later

Question 8

• sentinel case

Answer 8

• sentinel case: The first case that is identified

Question 9

• incidence

Answer 9

• incidence: rate of occurrence or influence; especially : the rate of occurrence of new cases of a particular disease in a population being studied

Question 10

• prevalence

Answer 10

• prevalence: the percentage of a population that is affected with a particular disease at a given time—compare incidence

Question 11

• morbidity

Answer 11

• morbidity: the incidence of disease : the rate of sickness (as in a specified community or group)

Question 12

• mortality

Answer 12

• mortality: the number of deaths in a given time or place

Question 13

• outbreak

Answer 13

• outbreak: a sudden rise in the incidence of a disease

Question 14

• disease surveillance

Answer 14

• disease surveillance: Disease surveillance is an epidemiological practice by which the spread of disease is monitored in order to establish patterns of progression

Question 15

• descriptive data

Answer 15

• descriptive data: quantitatively describing the main features of a collection of data, or the quantitative description itself (Time, place, and person information on cases)

Question 16

• analytic data

Answer 16

• analytic data: Risk factor information on cases and controls (Case-Control or Cohort Studies) Get all of the people who are sick – how many ate the potato salad?

Question 17

• experimental data

Answer 17

• experimental data: Randomized control trials (RCT) where individuals are assigned randomly to be in the exposed or unexposed groups. Try different treatments and seeing which one works better

Question 18

• attack rate

Answer 18

• attack rate: a form of incidence that measures the proportion of persons in a population who experience an acute health event during a limited period (e.g., during an outbreak), calculated as the number of new cases of a health problem during an outbreak divided by the size of the population at the beginning of the period, usually expressed as a percentage or per 1,000 or 100,000 population

Question 19

• cross-tabulation

Answer 19

• cross-tabulation: Compares attack rates to exposures

Question 20

List the steps in investigating a disease outbreak

Answer 20

i. Case definition
ii. Validate existence of outbreak
iii. Examine distribution of cases
iv. Look for interactions
v. Generate & test hypotheses of transmission
vi. Recommend control measures Have to come up with a plan — Where epidemiology and medicine interact