Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of health-event patterns in a society. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform evidence-based medicine for identifying risk factors for disease and determining optimal treatment approaches to clinical practice and for preventive medicine. In the study of communicable and non-communicable diseases, epidemiologists are involved in outbreak investigation to study design, data collection, statistical analysis, documentation of results and submission for publication. Epidemiologists rely on a number of other scientific disciplines such as biology (to better understand disease processes), biostatistics (the current raw information available) and social science disciplines (to better understand proximate and distal risk factors).