HEL-3060 Epidemiology II - 10 stp

The knowledge you need to define, describe and understand the of basic concepts of epidemiology is covered in Hel-3006. During the Hel-3060 course we will further elaborate on those concepts, and also work on other advanced and applied topics of epidemiology. During the course, you will develop your knowledge, skills, and competencies as follows:

-Knowledge: You will be able to apply, analyze and assess main principles of epidemiology: study designs, confounding and bias, validity, causality. You will become familiar with principles and methods of different fields of epidemiology.

-Skills: You will have the skills to plan and conduct most aspects of an epidemiological study.

-General competencies: to discuss and apply a scientific approach and epidemiological thinking, and to perform critical appraisal your own work and the work of others.

After the course you will be able to:

-choose appropriate study designs according to a research question, and draw appropriate conclusions based on the different study designs.

-describe and compare ways to deal with confounding and bias.

-describe and evaluate aspects of representability and external validity

-describe validity and reproducibility issues related to questionnaires and biological measurements, be familiar with methods to measure them and methods to reduce these issues.

-describe the development of different approaches to causality in epidemiology. Describe and compare canonical frameworks and modern causal inference methods including directed acyclic graphs and mediation.

-plan epidemiological studies: formulate research questions, be familiar with different sources of data and their pros and cons, choosing the right study design, perform sample size calculation.

-conduct an epidemiological study: describe good practice in the startup phase of data analysis (incl. data management and descriptive statistics), be familiar with methods for how to choose your confounders, describe statistical interaction and effect modification, be familiar with methods for handling missing data, perform sensitivity analyses, skills to interpretate research findings, be familiar with principles for communication of study results to different audiences.

-describe and apply principles of infectious disease epidemiology.

-describe and apply aspects of clinical epidemiology: calculate properties of screening tests

In addition, several topics will be introduced, and after the course you will be familiar with:

-the main ethical considerations in epidemiology

-different fields of epidemiology

-principles of screening for diseases/conditions

-concepts like overtreatment, and regional variation in health care

Teaching methods

There are three intensive course weeks with full-day teaching activities, spread out during the fall semester. Between week 1-2 and 2-3 there are obligatory home assignments for the students to work on and submit. The course has multiple teaching approaches (lectures, seminars, group work), and active use of the Internet learning management system Canvas is mandatory. Attendance to lectures and seminars is mandatory.

The date for the exam can be changed. The final date will be announced at your faculty early in May and early in November.