Introduction to the Principles and Methods of Epidemiology

Catalog description

This course is designed to introduce students in all branches of public health to the principles and methods of epidemiology and its approaches and applications. The course introduces the basic epidemiological study designs, including randomized trials and observational studies (cohort, case-control, cross-sectional, ecological), and presents the foundations to understand risk, disease surveillance, and modeling. At the completion of this course, the student will be able to: (1) identify key data sources for epidemiology; (2) understand the principles of public health screening and surveillance programs; (3) describe public health problems in terms of magnitude, people, time, and place; (4) explain the importance of epidemiology for informing scientific, ethical, economic, and political discussions on health issues. Homework and in-class assignments focus on building skills in locating, interpreting, assessing, synthesizing, and communicating evidence from the epidemiologic literature, with an emphasis on critical thinking, causal inference, and understanding bias and confounding.