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Modern medicine is divided into many different fields, each dealing with slightly different issues and having slightly different tasks. One of the most needed branches of medicine is epidemiology. What does epidemiology do? What matters does he investigate and what research methods does he most often use? You can learn all of this in the article below.
What is Epidemiology?
Epidemiology is a branch of medicine that studies the relationship between the environment and the health of the entire population. The epidemiologist deals mainly with the so-called environmental diseases and the analysis of factors that affect the health of the population. This science is also closely related to other sciences, such as biostatics and demography, and the tasks of an epidemiologist include health risk assessment. However, epidemiology is also a science that aims to promote health and make the population aware of risk factors and proper protection against environmental diseases.
What epidemiological studies are there?
In order for an epidemiologist’s work to be effective, it is necessary, first of all, to conduct appropriate research. Research in epidemiology can be divided into three main groups: observational, review and experimental studies. The first group, i.e. observational studies, can be divided into three subgroups: case-control, cohort, and cross-sectional studies. Case-control studies, also known as retrospective studies, consist in selecting two groups of people – with a given disease and a control group without the disease. Cohort studies, also called prospective studies, usually consist of examining healthy people in terms of their environmental conditions. Screening studies are aimed at determining the health status of the entire population, while experimental studies are directed at a given factor that causes the disease.
What issues does the epidemiologist investigate?
An epidemiologist deals with many important issues in his work. Above all, however, it studies and analyzes the health of the entire population, and also tries to understand the process of spreading environmental diseases. Epidemiology must take into account both environmental and social factors. However, analysis is not everything. An epidemiologist is also needed to eliminate those factors that contribute to the spread of disease, increased disability and death. For this purpose, it is also necessary to educate the entire population, therefore the tasks of epidemiology also include promoting activities beneficial to health, shaping pro-health policy, organizing preventive actions, and analyzing scientific works related to the factors of disease development. The epidemiologist is also involved in the preparation of vaccination plans and other work related to vaccines.
How to get to the epidemiologist?
In order to get to the epidemiologist, an appropriate referral is necessary. You can get such a referral by going to, for example, your GP.