The principles of epidemiology are essential in the study of the ecology and description of the natural history of disease, health surveillance, disease detection, disease outbreak investigation and clinical medicine. See links below for more information.
At the planning stage of a project
- Asking an answerable question
With the study design
- Choosing the appropriate type of study
- Defining outcome measures
- Questionnaire design and pilot testing
At the grant proposal stage
- Sample size estimation
- Planning data analysis
With data collection and management- Spreadsheets
- Databases
- Questionnaires
With the analysis and interpretation of data
- Descriptive statistics and presentation of results
- Inferential statistics and interpretation of results
With the write-up of results
- Scientific paper writing and review
- Report writing and review
- Presentation skills
Epidemiology is an essential tool for the study of the ecology and description of the natural history of disease, health surveillance, disease detection and disease outbreak investigation. What has been described as "shoe-leather" epidemiology refers to the door-to-door interviews that have been used to identify affected individuals (cases) and unaffected individuals (controls) in an outbreak or disease investigation. This type of epidemiological technique is invaluable in identifying risk facors and potential causes of disease.
As both a scientist and a veterinarian, Dr. Vicki Adams offers a unique set of skills that can be applied to the field of clinical epidemiology, which is said to be ‘clinical’ as it seeks to answer clinical questions and to guide clinical decision making and ‘epidemiology’ as it focuses on the care of individual patients in the context of the larger population and the methods used to answer clinical questions. At the clinical level, the principles of epidemiology provide tools for evaluating methods of diagnosis and treatment in the clinical environment.
