Epidemiology for Public Health

Overview

Syllabus

Courses

• Measuring Disease in Epidemiology

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  4 weeks long, 2-4 hours a week

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  Epidemiological research is ubiquitous. Even if you don’t realise it, you come across epidemiological studies and the impact of their findings every single day. You have probably heard that obesity is increasing in high income countries or that malaria is killing millions of people in low income countries. It is common knowledge that smoking causes cancer and that physical activity is protective against heart disease. These facts may seem obvious today, but it took decades of epidemiological research to produce the necessary evidence. In this course, you will learn the fundamental tools of epidemiology which are essential to conduct such studies, starting with the measures used to describe the frequency of a disease or health-related condition. You will also learn how to quantify the strength of an association and discuss the distinction between association and causation. In the second half of the course, you will use this knowledge to describe different strategies for prevention, identify strengths and weaknesses of diagnostic tests and consider when a screening programme is appropriate.

• Study Designs in Epidemiology

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  4 weeks long, 2-4 hours a week

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  Choosing an appropriate study design is a critical decision that can largely determine whether your study will successfully answer your research question. A quick look at the contents page of a biomedical journal or even at the health news section of a news website is enough to tell you that there are many different ways to conduct epidemiological research.
  In this course, you will learn about the main epidemiological study designs, including cross-sectional and ecological studies, case-control and cohort studies, as well as the more complex nested case-control and case-cohort designs. The final module is dedicated to randomised controlled trials, which is often considered the optimal study design, especially in clinical research. You will also develop the skills to identify strengths and limitations of the various study designs. By the end of this course, you will be able to choose the most suitable study design considering the research question, the available time, and resources.

• Validity and Bias in Epidemiology

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  4 weeks long, 2-4 hours a week

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  Epidemiological studies can provide valuable insights about the frequency of a disease, its potential causes and the effectiveness of available treatments. Selecting an appropriate study design can take you a long way when trying to answer such a question. However, this is by no means enough. A study can yield biased results for many different reasons. This course offers an introduction to some of these factors and provides guidance on how to deal with bias in epidemiological research. In this course you will learn about the main types of bias and what effect they might have on your study findings. You will then focus on the concept of confounding and you will explore various methods to identify and control for confounding in different study designs. In the last module of this course we will discuss the phenomenon of effect modification, which is key to understanding and interpreting study results. We will finish the course with a broader discussion of causality in epidemiology and we will highlight how you can utilise all the tools that you have learnt to decide whether your findings indicate a true association and if this can be considered causal.