Rose - Sick individuals and sick populations

Arguments

• Adopts the population approach:

  • The distribution of risk exposure in a population is shaped by contextual conditions

  • Most cases in a population are represented by individuals with an average level of risk exposure

  • Look at population as a whole

• Recommends broad scale interventions targeting the whole population like:

  • Mass environmental control methods

  • Interventions aimed at changing behavioural norms

• Argues that the priority of concern should always be the discovery and control of the causes of incidence, and once those causes can be removed, susceptibility and high-risk populations ceases to matter

General info

• Case-centered epidemiology identifies individual susceptibility, but it may fail to identify the underlying causes of incidence

• The high-risk strategy of prevention is an interim expedient, needed in order to protect susceptible individuals, but only for so long as the underlying causes of incidence remain unknown or uncontrollable; if causes can be removed, susceptibility ceases to matter

• The priority of concern should always be the discovery and control of the causes of incidence