FOCP
Alexandra Burke-Smith
Global Health: Non-Infectious Disease EP 1 - Prof Paul Elliot (p.elliot@imperial.ac.uk) Dr Petra Wark (p.wark@imperial.ac.uk)
1. Explain the concept of epidemiological transition 2. Describe the current burden of non-infectious diseases and their disparities worldwide 3. Identify the commonest non-infectious causes of world mortality and some of the causes underlying their high incidence
Epidemiology and Epidemiological Transition
Clinical medicine is concerned with cases of disease and the disease burden for the individual patient Epidemiology is concerned with disease rates and the burden of disease in populations
What is epidemiology? “The study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations and the application of this study to control health problems”. This considers: Distribution of disease: e.g. global patterns Cause/determinants of disease: e.g. risk factors Prevention and health promotion Epidemiological Transition “The shift from infectious and deficiency diseases to chronic non-communicable diseases as the result of sociodemographic changes among the poorer countries”
Complex and dynamic: the health and disease patterns of a society evolve in diverse ways as a result of demographic, socioeconomic, technological, cultural, environmental and biological changes Several stages of transition may overlap in the same country. For example, the decline in infectious diseases may be slow/stagnant in some sectors of the population while non-communicable diseases may be increasingly rapidly in another sector of the same population During the epidemiologic transition, a long-term shift occurs in mortality and disease patterns whereby pandemics of infection are replaced by degenerative and man-made diseases
Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology Lecture Notes Epidemiological Trends: -
Time- measured in rate per population over time period (e.g. years, decades, days etc) HD has highest rate increase since ~1940s Between 1930 and 1950, Canada saw mortality rate almost double USA saw highest mortality rate from CHD in approx 1970s Person- race, gender, sex- AGE adjusted to remove effect of ageing population Incidence of CHD related deaths in men greater than women Place- rate according to place (at a particular time) e.g. country Prevalence rate in California and Hawaii greater than Japan, but many Japanese moved to Hawaii and California 1