Essential Epidemiology

Penelope Webb, MA (Cambridge), DPhil (Oxford), is a Distinguished Scientist and Senior Group Leader at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia, and an 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 in France, and at Harvard University in the United States. She has published more than 400 original research papers in the field of epidemiology. Chris Bain, MB BS (UQ), MPH, MSc (Harvard), formerly Reader in Epidemiology, University of Queensland, taught epidemiology to public health and medical students for over three decades and 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 United Kingdom and the United States. Andrew Page, BA(Psych) Hons (Newcastle), PhD (Sydney), is Professor of Epidemiology in the Translational Research Institute and 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 over fifteen years and has published more than 250 research articles and reports across a range of population health topics. He is also a senior research associate with the Center for Mind and Culture in the United States, has been a research associate at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and previously held academic appointments at the University of Queensland and University of Sydney.

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. Public health surveillance: collecting data for public health action Martyn Kirk, Penelope Webb and Chris Bain; 13. Clusters, outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics Martyn Kirk and Penelope Webb; 14. Prevention: better than cure?; 15. Early detection: what benefits at what cost?; 16. Epidemiology and the public's health.