First semester

Concept and methods in epidemiology

Objectives

Construct frequency indicators such as prevalence and incidence.
Choose a study design suited to the investigation of an epidemiological phenomenon.
Construct association indicators used to identify risk/determinant factors.
Interpret the results of epidemiological studies, taking into account sources of error.

Course outline

Epidemiology as a public health science
Frequency indicators
Epidemiological study designs and indicators of association: the link between smoking and lung cancer
Bias and confounding
Surveillance and epidemiological investigation
Association and causality

Prerequisites

Probability, inferential statistics, SAS, R (1A)
Regression, GLM (2A)