Overview of the Discipline of Epidemiology Flashcards
The profession of public health and epidemiology impacts?
> millions of lives at a time
What is epidemiology?
> a public health-discipline basic science which studies the DISTRIBUTION and DETERMINANTS of diseases in POPULATIONS to control disease and illness and promote health
Does epidemiology have sub-specialties?
> yes
> By disease, by exposure, by population, or a combination of these
What are the objective activities in epidemiology?
> identify patterns/ trends in disease occurrence in various groups, and over time
determine the extent of disease
identify the causes of, or risk factors for, diseases and those who may be at risk
study natural occurrences of disease
evaluate effectiveness of measures that may prevent, reduce risk of, and treat disease
assist in developing health policy to promote health
what are some of the epidemiological assumptions?
> disease occurrence is not random
systematic investigation of different populations can identify ASSOCIATIONS and causal/preventive factors and impact of changes can impart on health of population
making comparisons is the cornerstone of systematic disease assessments/ investigations
Distribution of disease
> frequencies of disease occurrence
» not only counts but also counts in relation to size of the population
> patterns of disease occurrences (3 aspects)
» person, place, time
Three W’s of descriptive epidemiology?
> who, when, where
Determinants of disease?
> factors of susceptibility / exposure/ risk
> etiology/ cause of disease
> mode(s) of transmission
> social/ environmental/ biologic elements that determine the occurrence/ presence of disease
Analytic epidemiology functions to determine the answers to these two questions (often the most difficult to determine)?
> why
> how
6 core functions of epidemiology?
> public health surveillance > field investigation > analytic studies > evaluation > linkages > policy development
Purpose of public health surveillance?
> portray ongoing patterns of disease occurrence, so investigations, control and prevention measures can be developed and applied
» ex. reportable diseases registry (NNDSS/NEDSS) AND morbidity / mortality / birth registries
True or False: depending on the type of disease a patient has, it needs to be reported?
> true
Key skills for public health surveillance?
> designing and using data collection instruments
data management via descriptive methods and graphing/ presentation reporting (descriptive statistics/ epi. curves)
data interpretation
scientific writing and presentation (CDC/MMWR)
Purpose of field investigation?
> determine source(s)/ vehicle(s) of disease; to simply learn more about the natural history, clinical spectrum, descriptive epidemiology (3 W’s) and risk factors of a disease (before determining what interventions may be appropriate)
» ex. ground beef as source of 0157:H7 AND eggs as source of salmonella
Purpose of analytic studies?
> advance the information (hypotheses) generated by descriptive epidemiology techniques
