Introduction to Epidemiology

At the end of this course, student should be able to: 1. define epidemiology and describe its relationship with medicine and public health; 2. identify parameters related to morbidity and mortality; 3. define, interpret, and calculate measures of event occurrence; 4. define, compare, and contrast the design of case-control, cross sectional, cohort, and randomized trials; 5. define and identify concepts of causality; 6. identify and distinguish common types of bias; and 7. evaluate and discuss practical issues in designing and implementing epidemiological studies.

Introducing the history and concepts of epidemiology, using principles and methods of both descriptive and analytical epidemiology to address public health problems and issues. Practical application of epidemiology, measures of morbidity and mortality, descriptive epidemiology, causation, source of epidemiological data, epidemiological studies’ design, measure of effect, data interpretations issues, and screening for disease in the community.