Epidemiology Quiz

Lectures 1-5

Why do we need epidemiology?

• Identify trends in the public’s health (increase in colorectal cancer)

• Provide advance warning of possible threats to public health (event based surveillance, sentinel surveillance, social media monitoring, wastewater testing)

• Keep people healthy, prevent illness (screening, prevention, awareness, vaccination)

• Maximize societal benefit, minimize burden (focus on prevention over treatment, cost effective prevention programs)

• Reduce health disparities (build trust locally, widely promote all programs, tailoring programs and policies based on local data)

Early Epidemiologists - Hippocrates

• Rejected the idea that illness was religious or supernatural, breaking with ancestral tradition

• Recognized association of disease with place

• Believed disease was a result of imbalance of the body’s “humors”

• Creator of the Hippocratic Oath, modern version still used today

Early Epidemiologists - John Graunt

• English statistician

• Examined number and causes of death to identify variations in death according to sex, residence, season, and age

Miasma

• Diseases caused by environmental factors such as contaminated water, foul air, and poor hygienic conditions

John Snow

• Founder of epidemiology

• Large cholera outbreak of London

• At the time, water was distributed by two main suppliers

• Traced the outbreak to one of the suppliers

Germ Theory - Louis Pasteur

• Discovered that microorganisms could cause disease

• Also studied fermentation and discovered pasteurization

Germ Theory - Robert Koch

• Established 4 postulates for providing a microorganism causes disease

  • Be present in all cases of disease

  • Be isolated from disease patient

  • Cause disease when introduced to healthy host

  • Be isolated again from new host