Epidemiology is the basic science of public health. It is applied in describing and interpreting geographical and temporal patterns in population health, in identifying prevention strategies, and in estimating and evaluating the impact of risk factors and preventive measures on population health.

The course will consist of 5 consecutive days of lecture and in-class exercises, and an exam. 

At the end of the course, the student is able to:

• describe the typical features of public health and public health epidemiology
• weigh and compare the effects of high risk versus population strategies for prevention
• reproduce at least 5 different measures of population health, their interpretation and use in public health policy or practice
• calculate life expectancy from life-table data and construct survival curves
• describe dilemma’s in the implementation of population measures for smoking reduction from the societal, economical and health perspective
• calculate the effect of exposure to risk factors on life expectancy and attributable fraction
• weigh and interpret contribution of risk factors to population health
• describe types of input required to model future trends in population health
• describe the main underlying factors causing of patterns in population health
• apply epidemiological methods to study ethnic and socio-economic inequalities in population health
• interpret results from multilevel analysis to disentangle effects of a shared environment (contextual effects) and individual risk factors on population health