lecture 3

Question 1

what is epidemiology

Answer 1

Is the study of the distribution of disease and determinants of disease frequency in populations.

Is the study of “causes” of disease.

Question 2

goal fo epidemiology

Answer 2

control health problems and improve health at population level

Question 3

epidemiology operations

Answer 3

counting causes of M&M (POTENTIALLY MODIFIABLE CAUSES)

determining variables associates with M&M

guiding interventions to improve public health

Question 4

basic assumptions of epidemiology

Answer 4

death, disease, disability do not occur at random

there are causal factors that can be ID’d thru investigation

ID’ing factors can lead to preventative intervention

Question 5

clinical and research concers

Answer 5

usually you know either the exposure or the outcome and you want to measure the other

need to make sure you measure accurately and understand what population is represented

Question 6

achievements in epidemiology and oral health

Answer 6

water fluoridation

fluoridated tooth paste

smoking as RF for oral cancer

Question 7

endemic definition

Answer 7

the usual occurrence of a disease in a given population

Question 8

epidemic definition

Answer 8

a meaningful increase in the occurrence of a disease in a given population

Question 9

pandemic definition

Answer 9

spread of a disease across large region or worldwide

Question 10

independent variable

Answer 10

exposure of interest

Question 11

dependent variable

Answer 11

outcome of interest

Question 12

epidemiology is fundamentally concerned with

Answer 12

populations

Question 13

association defintion

Answer 13

an identifiable relation between exposure and dz

Question 14

association examples

Answer 14

incidence rate of oral cancer higher among smokers than nonsmokers’

xerostomia is associated with higher caries risk

Question 15

three questions in causal inference

Answer 15

methodological: how do we look for the casue
ontological: what is a cause
ethical: how do we decide if there is enough evidence

Question 16

cause definition

Answer 16

an event, condition or characteristic that PRECEDED the disease and without with the disease WOULD NOT have occurred at all or would not have occurred until some later time

Question 17

criteria for assessing casualty

Answer 17

strength of association

dose-response relationship

temporal sequence

biologic credibility

consistency of findings

Question 18

risk factor definitoin

Answer 18

a factor which if present increases the probability of disease occurrence

Question 19

risk factor criteria

Answer 19

exposure must precede disease onset

must be associated with increased disease frequence

absence of errors and bias

Question 20

four types of scales (quantification in epidemiology)

Answer 20

nominal scale
ordinal scale
interval
ratio

Question 21

nominal scale

Answer 21

uses names

Question 22

ordinal scale

Answer 22

follows and order based on severity

Question 23

interval scale

Answer 23

follows mathematical order but has no true zero

Question 24

ratio scale

Answer 24

follows mathematical order and has a defined true zero

Question 25

how to quantify cases as prevalent or incident

Answer 25

measuring:

prevalence proportion
incidence rate

Question 26

prevalence formula

Answer 26

cases/ #persons in population

AT A SPECIFIED TIME

Question 27

incidence formula

Answer 27

new cases of disease/ population at risk

over time period

Question 28

t/f: prevalence can be measured as a rate

Answer 28

NO

Question 29

t/f: incidence can be measured as a rate

Answer 29

YES, it is NOT meaningful without a time unit