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  4. Epidemiology I

Epidemiology I

Objectives


After this unit, students should be able to:
1. Define epidemiology.
2. List at least two historical marks that have contributed to the development of epidemiology.
3. Describe the assumptions of the epidemiological method.
4. Identify the three components of the epidemiological triad.
5.List at least three domains of the health sciences were epidemiology ca n be applied.
6. Describe the main design characteristics and identify advantage and disadvantage of clinical trials, community trials and field trials.
7. Identify at least one advantage and disadvantage of clinical trials, community trials and field trials.
8. Discuss at least one bias of clinical, community and field trial.
9. Describe the main characteristics and identify at least one advantage and one disadvantage of ecological, cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies.
10. Identify at least one advantage and disadvantage of ecological, cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies.
11. Discuss at least one bias of ecological, cross-section al, case-control and cohort studies.
12. Compute, interpret and apply measures of prevalence, incidence.
13. Compute, interpret and apply measures of association.
14. Analyze the value of each study design and their results in relation to the causal epidemiological thinking.

General characterization

Code

5788002

Credits

4

Responsible teacher

Inês Fronteira

Hours

Weekly - 5

Total - 43

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

Not applicable

Bibliography

• Fronteira, I. Manual de epidemiologia. Coimbra: Almedina; 2018.
• Altman, D. Practical statistics for medical research. London: Chapman and Hall; 1991.
• Bhopal R. Concepts of epidemiology: an integrated introduction to ideas, theories, principles and methods of epidemiology. Oxford University Press; 2002.
• Coughlin S, Beauchamp T. Ethics and Epidemiology. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 1996.
• Gordis L. Epidemiology. 4th ed. Saunders Elsevier; 2009.
• Porta M, Greenland S, Last J. A dictionary of Epidemiology. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2008.
• Rothman K, Greenland S. Modern Epidemiology. 2nd ed. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; 1998.
• Rothman K. Epidemiology: an introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press; 2012.

Teaching method

Expositions, based in lectures are going to be used to present definitions and theoretical aspects of epidemiology. The active method will be used to discuss practical exercises and cases.

Evaluation method

Evaluation will consist of a final written exam with multiple choice questions, short answer questions and true and false questions. The exam will correspond to a total of 100% of the final grade. The final grade will be given in a scale from 0 to 20. The student will be considered approved with a grade of 10 or more.
Students with less than 10 can do a second exam which will correspond to 100% of the final grade.

Subject matter

I. Introduction to epidemiology: definition, historical evolution, epidemiological method and applications of epidemiology.
II. Epidemiological studies: taxonomy of epidemiological studies, experimental studies (clinical, community and field trials); observational studies (ecological, cross-sectional, case-control and cohort), main sources of bias of different types of studies, advantages and disadvantages of each type of study..
III. Measures of prevalence and incidence: definition, computation and interpretation of person-time incidence, cumulative incidence and prevalence.
IV. Measures of association: definition, computation and interpretation of relative risk, risk ratio, odds ratio and attributable fraction. Difference between relative risk and risk ratio and between relative risk and odds ratio.
V. Causality in epidemiology: causal thinking and its evolution through the history of epidemiology, Bradford Hill causality guidelines, necessary, sufficient and component causes, value of epidemiological study design in causal discernment.