AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course has the following objectives:

- providing knowledges to the basic epidemiology concepts;

- providing knowledges to apply the main measures used in epidemiology (frequency and association measures);

- providing knowledges to the basic concepts of demography and to know the technical of standardization;

- providing knowledges to know and to plan the main types of epidemiological studies (descriptive, cross-sectional, case-control, cohort studies);

- providing knowledges to the methodology of clinical trials;

-providing knowledges to the concepts and model of epidemiology monitoring with attention to the syndromic surveillance system;

- providing knowledges to understand the epidemiology relevance for health planning and to develop the critical abilities to evaluate the results of clinical and epidemiological studies.

TEACHING METHODS

Frontal lessons.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

- Epidemiology: definition and objectives;

- Measuring the health care events: absolute frequencies, relationships, proportions and rates, incidence, prevalence, mortality, lethality;

- Measuring  the health care events in a static and dynamic cohort;

- The evaluation of the risks, the needs and the effectiveness in Public Health;

- Epidemiological surveillance and management of an outbreak;

- Describing the state of health of the population: the descriptive epidemiological studies;

- Providing knowledges about the associations in epidemiology: the cohort and case-control studies;

- The experimental epidemiological studies: the randomised controlled trial and community trial.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Lopalco PL, Tozzi AE "Epidemiologia facile Il pensiero scientifico"

- Jekel JF, Katz DL, Elmore JG "Epidemiologia, biostatistica e medicina preventiva" EdiSES