1st semester

Learning objectives

Upon successful completion of the course, students will know the concepts of individual and population health, the characteristic issues of public health and the basic prerequisites for capturing epidemiological hypotheses based on the collection of descriptive epidemiology data. Specifically, the data characterizing the place, time and populations affected in order to describe the incidence and distribution of health events in different populations.

In addition, they know the basic epidemiological methods for determining causative factors associated with the occurrence of diseases in the population, the characteristics of each method, the advantages and disadvantages of their application in the etiological investigation.

Detailed reference is made to epidemiological surveillance systems, how they are designed, operated and evaluated, as well as their role in shaping public health policies.

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to interpret the results of epidemiological studies, critically index published scientific papers, understand how to select specific epidemiological methods to investigate causal correlations and evaluate the findings of studies.

Course content

• Introduction to Epidemiology (definitions, descriptive, analytical epidemiology, purpose, conditions, types of epidemiological studies - short description).
• Use of epidemiology in the study of disease frequency, use of place, time, person in descriptive epidemiology, objectives of epidemiological research differences with clinical research, concepts of prevalence, incidence, basic sampling rules.
• Morbidity and mortality indicators, proportional indicators, health level assessment, life expectancy, comparison between indicators (modelling).
• Organization and conduct of a descriptive survey - detailed description, disadvantages / advantages of descriptive epidemiological studies.
• Formulation and testing of research hypotheses - Analytical epidemiology investigations - analytical description, advantages / disadvantages of human-time concept, interpretation of results.
• Causative indicators, relative risk, due risk, error, types of error, confounding factors.
• Prospective research, characteristics, group formation, monitoring of individuals, data analysis, interpretation of findings.
• Retrospective studies, characteristics, patient/control selection, research data, data analysis, stratification, interpretation of results.
• Clinical trials, intervention studies, evaluation of therapeutic measures, necessity, organization, analysis, interpretation of results, methods of comparative therapeutic research, safety of therapeutic measures.
• Basic principles of meta-analysis.
• Epidemiological investigation of outbreaks, infectious outbreaks