Epidemiology

Epidemiology

Epidemiology, “the study of what is upon the people,” is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. Considered a cornerstone methodology of public health research, it is also highly regarded in evidence-based medicine for identifying risk factors for disease and determining optimal treatment approaches to clinical practice. The work of communicable and non-communicable disease epidemiologists ranges from outbreak investigation, to study design, data collection and analysis including the development of statistical models to test hypotheses and the 'writing-up' of results for submission to peer reviewed journals.

Epidemiological statisticians work on projects such as calculating cancer incidence rates or the rates of chronic and infectious diseases, monitoring and reporting on disease outbreaks, and monitoring changes in health-related behaviors such as smoking and physical activity. Fields of practice include nutritional, environmental, genetic, and social epidemiology, as well as pharmacoepidemiology. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was one of the original members of the Royal Statistical Society and one of the first people to collect statistics on health policy. She was also a pioneer for women statisticians. Her work led to health policy reforms in 19th century Britain and saved the lives of countless British soldiers.

Work in epidemiology requires a similar basic training of statisticians as jobs in many other applied areas, but there are some special requirements. Statistical problems present themselves in epidemiology at several levels of complexity. Fundamental questions concerning, for example, selection bias in samples, often lead to problems in probability calculus. Numerous general concepts introduced at a secondary level in statistics are constantly referred to in epidemiology. One does...