Our textbook begins: CDC's Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice Chapter 1

Our textbook is free. This is because it is a government publication, and government publications don't have copyrights or something like that. Anyways it's the CDC's textbook written for government health workers as their official book on understanding epidemiology. Glad to be reading something this official. Also the CDC wrote it (in collaboration with other governmental departments) for me this is a huge plus.

So here we go, chapter one.

Epidemiology answers the questions that we were taught to ask in elementary school - the who, what, where, how and why - for questions of the health of a population. For example, what diagnosis, what health event? Which persons? Determine the place? What time and timing? What caused this, what are contributing risk factors, what is the mode of transmission? This is detective work.

To find these answers through the epidemiologist method requires a background in probability, statistics, research methods, and applying it too hypothesis in the fields of biology, physics, behavior sciences, and ergonomics (google define ergonomics: the study of people's efficiency in their working environment).

These answers give public health science to work from, data to act on. They are like the dispatch center calling in crimes, and giving information from which action can follow.

Think like an epidemiologist. "Epidemiologists assume
that illness does not occur randomly in a population, but happens
only when the right accumulation of risk factors or determinants
exists in an individual." - texbook

• What are the actual and potential health problems in the
community?
• Where are they occurring?
• Which populations are at increased risk?
• Which problems have declined over time?
• Which ones are increasing or have the potential to increase?
• How do these patterns relate to the level and distribution of
public health services available?

John Snow is the father of epidemiology as in 1854 he figured out the source of the cholera outbreak. The source was a water pump. The handle was removed and the cholera epidemic was halted. He used a spot map to prove his findings.

Doll and Hill are two who used epidemiology to link lung cancer to smoking.

Smallpox eradication was brought from epidemiology applied.