Objectives of the course: Hygiene and Epidemiology II is the second half of a course that introduces the basic concepts of hygiene, epidemiology and evidence-based medicine as applied to public health problems. Emphasis is placed on the principles and methods of epidemiologic investigation, appropriate summaries and displays of data, and the use of classical statistical approaches to describe the health of populations. Various epidemiologic study designs for investigating associations between risk factors and disease outcomes are also introduced, culminating with criteria for causal inferences. The application of these disciplines in the areas of health services, screening, genetics, and environment policy are presented.

Contents of the course: Topics pertain to evidence-based medicine and research methodology. They first include basic concepts in data sources and data collection and quality control (death certificates, registries, questionnaires, interviews, biomarkers) with an introduction to surveillance. In the following topics, students become familiar with sources and assessment of medical information coming from textbooks, reviews, research publications, conferences, advertisements, and the internet. In addition, basic principles of research design are discussed, with an initial focus on observational research (demography, ecological studies, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, case-cotrol studies). Subsequently, the students come to terms with detailed topics related to the design, analysis and reporting of randomized controlled trials. A detailed introduction to meta-analysis follows. Decision analyses, quality of life analyses and cost-effectiveness analyses are then discussed. Finally, topics on health status, burden of disease, health services and global health projections are introduced.

Mode and outcomes of teaching: The course is taught in combination with workshops in small groups. At the end of the course students should be critical consumers of the public health and medical literature, able to interpret descriptive epidemiologic results in order to develop hypotheses about possible risk factors for a disease, able to design valid and efficient studies to address public health and clinical problems, and comfortable with statistical methods for calculating summary estimates, measures of variability, and confidence intervals.

Hours of training per student: 91

Semester: 6th

ECTS: 4