INTRODUCTION
• Epidemiology (Greek words epi: on or upon, demos: people, and logos: the study of) is the application of many fields of science including biostatistics devoted towards the systematic study of the natural history of a disease. •
It is considered the science of public health.
• Assuming a disease does NOT occur at random, epidemiology can be used to: •
look for the determinants (cause) and distribution (how it spreads) of a disease
•
find out if a treatment is effective
•
look for factors that prevent and/or control a disease
• It is the basic science of public health work and of preventive medicine. • the definition of epidemiology is: "The study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to the control of health problems1"
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