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    Nothing To Do With Skin: The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research
    Nothing To Do With Skin: The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research
    Nothing To Do With Skin: The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research
    Ebook66 pages49 minutes

    Nothing To Do With Skin: The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research

    By Raywat Deonandan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Ever wonder how we know what we know? Especially in medical research? How do we know that some diets are probably more healthful than others? How do we know that smoking is likely to cause lung cancer? You might be surprised to learn that it's not all about scientists doing experiments in labs. Much of what we know comes from population sciences. And epidemiology is the mother of all population health sciences!

    Nothing To Do With Skin is an introduction to the science of population epidemiology, written by a well known, award winning, senior epidemiologist. The book is written for the absolute beginner, and includes a description of study designs, some of the common biases encountered, how to distinguish between correlation and causation, and an overview of key measures of association-- all with almost no mention of mathematics or statistics.

    This book is ideal for students starting out in a health research field, as well as the interested lay person who is eager to learn the basics of medical research.

    The author, Dr Raywat Deonandan, is a well known epidemiologist in Canada. As well as being an accomplished and widely published scholar, he has multiple teaching and writing awards, and is a common fixture in the media. He has written this book to share his love of epidemiology with the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIntanjible Publishing
    Release dateNov 30, 2024
    ISBN9798230202615
    Nothing To Do With Skin: The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research
    Author

    Raywat Deonandan

    About The Author Raywat Deonandan Raywat Deonandan is a professor at the University of Ottawa, and a highly decorated scholar and writer. In 2000, his first book, "Sweet Like Saltwater," was awarded the Guyana Prize, which is the national book award of the nation of Guyana, in the "Best First Work" category. 

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      Book preview

      Nothing To Do With Skin - Raywat Deonandan

      Nothing To Do With Skin

      The Fundamentals of Epidemiology and Population Health Research

      Raywat Deonandan

      image-placeholder

      Intanjible Publishing

      Copyright © 2014 Raywat Deonandan

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

      Cover image created by George Peter Gatsis (www.georgepetergatsis.com).

      What professional Epidemiologists are saying about this book....

      Dr. Deonandan's passion for science and for teaching shows in this book. This book provides a foundation for the exploration of population health sciences and is excellent for teaching new students about epidemiological methods.

      -Adam Stevens, MSc. Public Health Epidemiologist and Past President of the Association of Public Health Epidemiologists in Ontario

      A readable and very concise basic introduction to epidemiology, with helpful examples. Accessible and often entertaining.

       -Nicholas Barrowman, PhD. Biostatistician & Epidemiologist

      For my students, who keep me (more or less) honest.

      Preface

      This book is meant ostensibly as supplementary material for my 4th year undergraduate class in Epidemiology, but is relevant for anyone interested in obtaining a cursory understanding of how we in the population health sciences know what we claim to know. I do not pretend that this is a comprehensive textbook covering all aspects of Epidemiology, but merely an introduction to the basics of our science.

      I would like to thank my old friend George Peter Gatsis for contributing the cover image, and would like to dedicate this book to all my students. I came late to academia, as it was never my intended career path. Like most academics, when I decided to become a full-time professor, the last thing I wanted to do was actually teach; it’s something we try to minimize in our workloads, preferring to focus most of our energies on research. However, it was an unexpected joy to discover how much I was to learn from the act of teaching, and genuinely how much I cherish my time with students, whose enthusiasm and differing viewpoints never cease to amaze, inspire, and educate me. What a gift it has been to be allowed to become an educator.

      Contents

      1.Introduction

      2.Paradigms of Research

      3.Terminology

      4.Types of Study Designs

      5.Hierarchy of Evidence

      6.Measurements of Association

      7.Correlation and Causation

      8.Bias

      9.Confounding and Interaction

      10.Conclusion

      About the author

      image-placeholder

      Introduction

      How do we know what we know? That is a fairly profound philosophical question that is beyond the scope of this book. That particular question is the foundation of the fascinating discipline of Epistemology. But in this volume we will explore the basic tenets of that other science that begins with the letter e: Epidemiology. Yet even Epidemiology, to a very large extent, defines how we as a supposedly science-based society claim to know what we claim to know.

      There are too many jokes and stories about the misunderstanding of the word Epidemiology. Almost every practitioner of our discipline has been faced at some point with the honest misunderstanding that Epidemiology has something to do with Dermatology, mostly because of the word epidermis, which describes a layer of skin. (Or something like that. I don’t really know. I’m an Epidemiologist, not a skin doctor.)

      The word Epidemiology shares the same root as epidemic. Its origins have to do with the description and analysis of the spread of disease. The official definition is, the study of the determinants of health, which really doesn’t help the layperson understand what we do.

      A former professor of mine was held up at a border crossing once, when her profession was noticed by the border official. Are you transporting any dangerous insects? she was asked. No, she had to respond. I’m an Epidemiologist, not an Entomologist.

      Even when the epidemic root of our profession is acknowledged, it’s not uncommon to have what we do conflated with Virology or Molecular Biology. It’s true that some Epidemiologists work in labs and are specialists in infectious diseases. But they are the exception. To be honest, I’m rather disappointed that no one has assumed that my area of specialization is Etymology. I think I would enjoy that conversation.

      Another common misunderstanding of our profession is that we are also clinicians. Many Epidemiologists are also physicians, nurses, and other kinds of caregivers. But many more are

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