Course Objectives

From this course, students should be able to:
  • Understand the fundamental measures of disease occurrence in populations (incidence, prevalence, relative risk, absolute risk, incidence rates, mortality rates) 
  • Explain methods to perform an investigation of a disease outbreak in a community 
  • Apply concepts of disease variation in time, person and place to the understanding of disease in populations 
  • Explain the relative strengths and limitations of different strategies to study the association between risk factors (or exposures) and disease in populations 
  • Evaluate major sources of random and nonrandom error in community health studies 
  • Explain methods to control for sources of error 
  • Apply the criteria for causality to a body of literature providing evidence for an association between population exposures and disease 
  • Weigh the evidence that an observed association between exposure and disease is causal 
  • Understand the strategies available to evaluate the effectiveness of a public health intervention program 
  • Appreciate some of the complexities in applying scientific evidence to the making of public health policy