Discussion Epidemiology NSG 486

Discussion Epidemiology NSG 486

Discussion Epidemiology NSG 486

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86 Public Health Promotion And Disease Prevention

Week 3 Discussion

Epidemiology

Post a total of 3 substantive responses over 2 separate days for full participation. This includes your initial post and 2 replies to other students.

Respond to one of the following in a minimum of 175 words:

As digital epidemiology becomes more prevalent, what are some of the ethical considerations of using big data in public health surveillance?

OR

Imagine that during a community health assessment, you discover 30% of the population is overweight (including children). Discuss interventions to reduce this prevalence rate.

Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in defined populations.

It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences.[1]

Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials. Epidemiologists rely on other scientific disciplines like biology to better understand disease processes, statistics to make efficient use of the data and draw appropriate conclusions, social sciences to better understand proximate and distal causes, and engineering for exposure assessment.Epidemiology, literally meaning “the study of what is upon the people”, is derived from Greek epi ‘upon, among’, demos ‘people, district’, and logos ‘study, word, discourse’, suggesting that it applies only to human populations. However, the term is widely used in studies of zoological populations (veterinary epidemiology), although the term “epizoology” is available, and it has also been applied to studies of plant populations (botanical or plant disease epidemiology).[2]