Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Course Description

This course presents an introduction to epidemiologic concepts and the application of quantitative methods. Topics include measurement of disease occurrence, descriptive epidemiology, ecologic studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, measurement validity, screening, causation, random variation, bias, confounding, effect modification, randomized controlled trials, and epidemic investigation. The course utilizes a wide variety of case studies from both chronic and infectious disease epidemiology, representing both landmark studies and newer research.

Course Objectives

This course aims to give you a basic grounding in epidemiologic concepts and methods, and the statistical measures that relate to these methods. After completing this course, you should be able to:

• Explain and apply the basic terminology and definitions of epidemiology
• Perform statistical calculations used in research
• Describe a public health problem in terms of magnitude, person, place, and time
• Explain and apply the basic epidemiologic study designs, including ecologic studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, and randomized controlled trials.
• Draw appropriate inferences from epidemiologic data by applying the concepts of random variation, selection and information bias, confounding, and effect modification
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of a public health screening program and compute basic measures for evaluation of a screening program
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of epidemiologic reports and research articles
• Discuss important public health issues covered as case studies in the course
• Understand and critically evaluate the published epidemiologic

Methods of Assessment

Will be available in the syllabus