Environmental Epidemiology

At the end of this course, students should be able to: 1. explain the following terms: epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, descriptive epidemiology, analytical epidemiology, risk factor, cohort, surveillance and many others; 2. discuss domain in environmental epidemiology; 3. describe exposure assessment in environmental epidemiology; 4. discuss descriptive analysis and its application; 5. discuss methods of environmental epidemiological investigations such as time trend analysis; 6. explain risk assessment and risk management; 7. discuss the process of investigating pollution occurrences in the environment; 8. identify environmental hazards; 9. apply the use of computer applications in epidemiological investigations; 10. explain the differences between environmental contamination and environmental pollution; 11. discuss Environmental remediation, exposure quantification and dose response analysis; 12. describe the principles of healthy worker effect; and 13. enumerate measures of association, causality & attribution.

Definitions, concepts. General introduction to Epidemiology, Environmental epidemiology and domain of environmental epidemiology. Exposure Assessment. Descriptive Analysis, methods of investigation including the use of Time –Trend and Spatial pattern analysis. Poisson Regression. Surveillance, Risk Assessment and management. Pollution of air, water and soil, ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Investigation of disease clusters, potential environmental hazards to health. Rudiments of environmental epidemiology, use of statistical packages (SPSS, EPI – INFO, Epidata) and vital statistic and many others. Environmental contamination, environmental remediation, exposure quantification, dose response analysis, healthy worker effect principles, measures of association, causality & attribution.