Applied Epidemiology and Disease Control

This unit advances core epidemiology skills by applying study designs, measures, surveillance, and outbreak response to real-world public health problems. Students will practice interpreting rates, minimizing bias and confounding, following ethical procedures, and recommending prevention and control strategies (vaccination, water and travel guidance) while preparing for capstone investigations.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze and calculate core epidemiologic measures (incidence, prevalence, standardized rates) and use simple population projections to compare and interpret disease burden across groups
• Apply study-design principles to plan and lead observational investigations (case-control, cohort, ecological), plot study data, and implement methods to control for confounding
• Evaluate sources of bias and ethical issues in research and practice, and recommend strategies (including informed consent and early-stage bias avoidance) to protect data validity and participant rights
• Demonstrate surveillance and outbreak-investigation skills by using notifiable-disease data, assessing screening tests, and proposing appropriate disease control and prevention interventions (vaccination, infection control, water- and travel-related measures)