GCH 8111 Introduction to Epidemiology
This course will provide a basic understanding of the methods and tools used by epidemiologists to study the health of populations. The course will help the student understand that health is defined broadly, and the types of questions asked and answered by epidemiologists are infinitely varied. This happens as new health conditions arise (e.g., widespread gastrointestinal illness), new methods are developed to better elucidate mechanisms by which disease occurs (e.g., enhanced genetic testing mechanisms), previous health conditions take on new importance (e.g., obesity, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis), or epidemiologic methods are applied to problems in the domain of other disciplines (e.g., violence prevention). This variety makes epidemiology an exciting and useful endeavor. This course covers all the material and topics typically taken in an introductory course for epidemiology. The course will include basic math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills are necessary. It is important that students understand how to manipulate fractions, exponentiate a number, and take the natural log of a number.