PHLT103 Epidemiology Exam 1 Seplaki 2026 University of Rochester

WIP i'm going through slides first and then I'll do textbook stuffs

Epidemic

more cases than normal expectancy for health-related condition, behavior, or event

Pandemic

international/worldwide epidemic (usually impacting masses)

Epidemiology

study of distribution and determinants of health-related conditions, behaviors, or events [and how they can be controlled]

Key characteristics of Epidemiology & descriptions

• Population Focus

  • looks at groups of people, not individuals

• Distribution

  • occurence of cases varies across a population, especially among subgroups

• Determinants

  • causal risk factor to health-related outcome/condition/behavior/event

• Exposure

  • contact with determinants

• Outcomes

  • all possible results of exposure to a determinant

  • measured by morbidity and mortality

• Quantification

  • counting cases / measuring extremity of health outcomes

• Control of health problems

  • promoting good health

  • preventing and treating health outcomes

Morbidity

measures illness from a health condition

Mortality

measures death

What does epidemiology being an interdisciplinary science mean?

it uses information from diverse fields, including math, biostatistics, history, sociology, demography, geography, behavioral sciences, and law

What does epidemiology being an observational science mean?

it often uses naturally occuring situations in studies

Natural experiment

naturally occurring cirumstances with levels of exposure to a causal factor that resemble an experiment (though the participants are often nonrandom)

“right place, right time”

Descriptive epidemiology

studies the amount and distribution of health outcomes in a population (person, place, time)

Analytic epidemiology

studies causal/etiological hypotheses that relate exposures and health conditions

eg) natural experiments

Classical Antiquity (before 500 CE) epidemiology

Hippocrates = first to suggest that environmental factors may be associated with disease (rather than supernatural) in On Airs, Waters, and Places (400 BCE)

Middle Ages (~500-1450) epidemiology

Black Death (1346-1352) killed ~1/3 of Europe (~20-30mil people); primarily an epidemic of bubonic plague

Renaissance (~1200-1699) epidemiology

• Paracelsus (1493-1541) = a founder of toxicology; popularized dose-response relationship

• John Graunt (1620-1674) = first to analyze demographics with quantitative statistics [specifically using counts]; known for Bills of Mortality, which recorded population mortality

Eighteenth Century epidemiology

• Ramazzini (1633-1714) = founded occupational medicine (focus on work-related health)

• Sir Percival Pott (1714-1788) = first to describe environmental cause of cancer [specifically chimney sweeps and scrotal cancer]

• Edward Jenner (1749-1823) = first smallpox vaccination in 1796