Community Health: Epidemiologists
Epidemiologists conduct investigations to better understand how disease is distributed in the population and
what determines who gets sick and who does not.
Name 2 types of studies conducted by Epidemiologists.
Describe each type and give an example of when these type of investigations/studies are used
Describe in your own works Criteria of Causation and how it relates to exposure and a suspected risk factor
In a minimum of 250 words please list and compare several of the differences.
Sample Solution
Community Health: Epidemiologists
Epidemiological studies measure the risk of illness or death in an exposed population compared to that risk in an identical, unexposed population. Two major types of epidemiological studies are cohort and case-control. Cohort studies are a type of medical research used to investigate the causes of disease and to establish links between risk factors and health outcomes. Cohort studies typically observe large groups of individuals, recording their exposure to certain risk factors to find clues as to the possible causes of disease. They can be prospective studies and gather data going forward, or retrospective cohort studies, which look at data already collected. One famous example of a cohort study is the Nurses’ Health Study, a large, long-running analysis of women’s health, originally set up in 1976 to investigate the potential long term consequences of the use of oral contraceptives.
