Public Health and Epidemiology (SVUEK_088)
About Study Course
Objective
to provide basic knowledge and understanding of the modern public health and epidemiology, as well as to promote students’ scientific, systematic and analytic thinking.
Prerequisites
- Understanding of causal relationships in health, preliminary knowledge of the philosophy of causality;
- Application of principles and methods of epidemiology in practice, preliminary knowledge of the probability theory and mathematical statistics as well as computer skills;
- Understanding of the concepts of diagnosis and classification, as well as meaning of norm, screening; preliminary knowledge of normal and pathological physiology as well as propaedeutics;
- Knowledge of English in order to read and analyse modern literature.
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course the students will:
- define health and list main groups of health determinants;
- formulate practical and scientific tasks of the public health discipline;
- classify and describe the levels of disease prevention and objectives of health promotion;
- state historic development of the concept of epidemiology and its current understanding, list the future challenges;
- identify and interpret causal factors, risk factors as well as associated factors of diseases and health in the frame of multi-factorial theory;
- formulate principles of evidence based medicine;
- define principles to measure health related events and states;
- define principles of demographic measures;
- describe health information types, its main sources and factors influencing its quality;
- classify main designs of epidemiological studies and list their advantages and limitations;
- explain the concepts of confounding and bias
The students will be able to:
- differentiate causal and non-causal associations of factors and health events;
- calculate measures of health events and states;
- calculate demographic measures;
- apply electronic data bases for the selection of health information;
- appraise validity of epidemiological studies corresponding to the study designs.
After successful completion of the course the students will:
- justify the necessity of empirical data for practice of public health and its use to define and solve public health problems;
- elucidate prior public health problems by using quantitative empirical data;
- choose health and demographic measures for studies of health problems;
- critically judge health information depending on its source and taking into account evidence;
- evaluate effectiveness of treatment, disease prevention and health promotion.
Study course planning
| Study programme | Study semester | Program level | Study course category | Lecturers | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health Management, MFVM | 1 | Master’s | Required | ||
| Health Management, MFVMp | 1 | Master’s | Required | ||
| Health management, MFVVM | 1 | Master’s | Required | ||
| Health management, MFVVMp | 1 | Master’s | Required |
