Essential Epidemiology

Penelope Webb is a Principal Research Fellow and Group Leader at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, and Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. She taught basic and intermediate epidemiology to public health students across Australia for five years and has worked as a visiting scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, France, and Harvard University, Massachusetts. She has published more than 290 original research papers in the field of epidemiology. Chris Bain is formerly a Reader in Epidemiology at the University of Queensland and has taught epidemiology to public health and medical students for over three decades Bain has co-authored a book on systematic reviews, as well as many research papers. He has had wide exposure to international epidemiological practice and teaching in the UK and US. Andrew Page is Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Medicine at Western Sydney University, Australia. He has been teaching basic and intermediate epidemiology and population health courses to health sciences students for thirteen years, and has published over 180 research articles and reports across a diverse range of population health topics. He has been a Research Associate at the University of Bristol and has also worked at the University of Queensland and University of Sydney in Australia.

1. Epidemiology is …; 2. How long is a piece of string? Measuring disease frequency; 3. Who, what, where and when? Descriptive epidemiology; 4. Healthy research: study designs for public health; 5. Why? Linking exposure and disease; 6. Heads or tails: the role of chance; 7. All that glitters is not gold: the problem of error; 8. Muddied waters: the challenge of confounding; 9. Reading between the lines: reading and writing epidemiological papers; 10. Who sank the boat? Association and causation; 11. Assembling the building blocks: reviews and their uses; 12. Surveillance: collecting health-related data for epidemiological intelligence and public health action with Martyn Kirk; 13. Outbreaks, epidemics and clusters with Martyn Kirk and Adrian Sleigh; 14. Prevention: better than cure?; 15. Early detection: what benefits at what cost?; 16. Epidemiology and the public's health.