Public Health Epidemiology

Overview

Key Features

Public health epidemiology involves describing and interpreting geographical and temporal patterns in population health, identifying prevention strategies, and estimating and evaluating the impact of risk factors and preventive measures on population health. It is therefore essential to have a thorough understanding of public health epidemiology if your work or study involves any public health-related issues. 

This Public Health Epidemiology course from Utrecht University is therefore highly suited to epidemiologists in universities, hospitals, municipal health services and other governmental health organizations, and to PhD candidates working on an epidemiological or public health thesis.

You will start by learning the basic principles of public health epidemiology, illustrated by the main successes in this field in the past. We will focus on important measures of population health, their interpretation and use in public health policy. You will learn how to calculate the effect of an exposure on life expectancy and what part of this exposure can be attributed to the development of a disease. You will also weigh and compare the effects of two prevention strategies: intervening in individuals at high risk for developing a disease, versus introducing preventive measures for the whole population. 

The societal, economic and health dilemmas involved in introducing population measures will be illustrated by the smoking ban. This online medical course will also cover the persistent socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in health, including epidemiological and statistical methods, and you will learn the basic principles of how future trends in population health are modeled.