Synopsis

Public health interventions need to be built on an evidence base and part of this evidence comes from epidemiology: the study of how and why diseases occur. Epidemiology is a bit like a game of detection. It involves identifying diseases, finding out which groups of people are at risk, tracking down causes and so on. This unit looks at some key types of data used in epidemiology, such as statistics on death and ill health, and introduces some techniques used in analysing data.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Learning outcomes
1 Defining epidemiology
2 Early studies in epidemiology
2.1.1 Mortality statistics
2.1.2 Morbidity statistics
2.2 Descriptive epidemiology
2.2.1 Notifiable diseases
2.2.2 Persons: which groups in the population have health problems?
2.2.3 Place: where do the problems occur?
2.2.4 Time: when do health problems occur?
3 Analytic epidemiology
3.1 The epidemiological triad
3.2 Types of epidemiological studies
3.2.1 Cross-sectional studies
3.2.2 Case-control studies
3.2.3 Cohort studies
3.2.4 Intervention studies
3.3 Quasi-experimental design
3.4 Conclusion
Next steps
References
Acknowledgements

 

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