Introduction Descriptive Epidemiology and Public Health

The course teaches you the basic concepts, measures and study designs of descriptive epidemiology and public health. All course concepts are embedded and illustrated within a nutritional epidemiology research context. Descriptive studies investigate when, where and among whom health and disease in certain populations occur. Policy makers can use results of these studies in the field of public health. Different epidemiological and public health measures are introduced to describe health, disease and mortality. You will learn when to use these measures and how to calculate them. In addition, you are introduced to some major diseases that are important from a nutritional perspective, such as diabetes mellitus, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.
As a (nutritional) epidemiologist you need to know where to find valid data on disease occurrence (prevalence and incidence) worldwide. This will give you insight into differences between countries or regions. However, even data from reliable sources need to be interpreted with caution. Therefore in this course, we have series of online discussion exercises that focus on a few diseases which are important from a nutritional perspective, such as diabetes and cancer. These exercises are used to illustrate epidemiological principles and stimulate critical thinking about epidemiological measurement. The same we will do for mortality and life-expectancy.
This is a fully, mainly asynchronous, online course. This course's content largely overlaps with the course HNH-24806 Introduction to Epidemiology and Public Health and can not be taken within the same program.

• Describe the field of epidemiology and public health and the work of scientists in this field

• Calculate basic measures used in epidemiology and public health, including: prevalence, incidence rate and proportion, DALY, Years of Life Lost, Healthy Life Expectancy

• Understand basic study designs used in descriptive epidemiology and public health and indicate the major (dis)advantages of the various study designs

• Perform standardization of public health data

• Describe the disease process, global information about the spread of the disease worldwide, time trends in incidence and prevalence, for infectious diseases, diabetes mellitus, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and osteoporosis

• Performance (0%) Active contribution to online group discussion is compulsory (pass/fail); a fail can be remediated the next time the course runs.
• Written test with open and closed questions (100%) Remote proctored written exam with closed and open questions (100%);
• Assignment video (0%) Individual submission of video assignment (pass/fail); resubmission is possible in the resit period.

• Webb C. & Bain P. (2017 or 2020). Essential epidemiology: an introduction for students and health professionals. Cambridge University Press,3rd or 4th edition (as soon as the 5th edition is published, expected 2024/25, the 4th and 5th edition are allowed to use in this course). Haveman-Nies A, Jansen SC, van Oers JAM, van 't Veer P (2010). Epidemiology in public health practice. Wageningen Academic Publishers, The Netherlands. (second revised version), only one or two chapters are used in this course and will be available in Brightspace.