Epidemiology: The Study of Disease, Injury, and Death in the Community
This chapter explored the idea of epidemiology. Epidemiologists are concerned with the course of disease in a population. The definition of epidemiology is the “study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to control health problems”. The use of rates (birth, death, injury and disease) is frequent. Three different types of rates are incidence, prevalence and attack. The data collected by epidemiologists are used in the planning of health programs and facilities. There are many ways in which the data can be obtained. The U.S. Census, the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), and National Health surveys are some of the most popular sources of information. There are two types of studies conducted by epidemiologists to help determine the cause of disease outbreaks: descriptive and analytic. Descriptive studies aim to describe the who, when, and where of an outbreak, while analytic studies focus on the idea of diseases and risk factors.
This is a really nice overview of the chapter. I think one thing that could've been talked more about is epidemiologists themselves. They are the people who do all of the work and conduct all of the surveys and sift through all of the data to come to a final consensus of what's actually going on. I think it's pretty incredible the work they do. Before reading this chapter I never even knew they existed and now I have a pretty great appreciation for them and all that they do.
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