Chapter 3 Epidemiology: The Study of Disease, Injury, and Death in the Community

Chapter 3 discussed epidemiology and the different components of it. A person who studies the trends of disease, injury, and death among a population is called an epidemiologist. The goal of the epidemiologist is to limit the disease, injuries, and deaths in a community by making it so that the outbreaks of epidemics are limited or don't happen at all.
There are many tools epidemiologists use to calculate certain rates, such as: mortality rates, fatality rates, incident, prevalence, attack, age-adjusted, crude, and many more. These help to see where the outbreaks are occurring so that the epidemiologist can go to that particular population and figure out how to keep sickness to a minimal. Epidemiologists also use tools to help analyze disease, such as the US Census, the CDC, and three types of studies: descriptive, analytic, and experimental.
- Descriptive studies describe the extent of outbreaks in regard to person, place, and time.
- Analytic studies test hypotheses regarding associations between diseases and risk factors.
- Experimental studies examine the effects of specific factors under carefully controlled conditions.
After discussing this chapter, Fab Five agreed that the job of an epidemiologist would be very hard, having to deal with so many people, endless causing factors, terminology, and statistics. We all agreed that epidemiology truly can be called "population medicine" because the way doctors see patients, epidemiologists see populations. Overall, we all thought this chapter was an eye-opener because all of our lives we've only had to worry about our health and our families health; however, we now understand the factors that go into studying the diseases of a community and find it fascinating how they are tracked, taken care of, and prevented.