Public Health and Epidemiology (SVUEK_036)
About Study Course
Objective
To provide an opportunity to gain basic knowledge and understanding of modern public health and epidemiology, as well as to promote students’ scientific, systematic, and analytic thinking.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge in human anatomy, physiology and pathology. Knowledge of English in order to read and analyse course literature.
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, the students will:
• define the concept of health and list the main groups of health determinants;
• formulate practical and scientific tasks of the public health discipline;
• classify and describe the levels of disease prevention and define basic principles of screening;
• describe objectives of health promotion;
• state historic development of the concept of epidemiology and its current understanding;
• formulate the concept of evidence-based health care;
• identify and interpret causal factors, risk factors of diseases and health in the frame of multi-factorial theory;
• define principles to measure health-related events and states;
• describe health information types, their main sources, and factors influencing their quality;
• explain measures of test sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values;
• explain the relationship between test sensitivity and specificity as illustrated by the ROC curve;
• classify the 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;
• describe and give examples of disease prevention and health promotion;
• calculate measures of health events and states;
• differentiate crude, specific and standardized rates;
• differentiate and compare electronic databases for the selection of health information;
• calculate test sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values;
• appraise the validity of epidemiological studies corresponding to the study designs;
• calculate measures of association.
Upon 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;
• justify the need of health promotion and disease prevention;
• elucidate prior public health problems by using quantitative empirical data;
• critically choose health measures for studies of health problems;
• critically judge health information depending on its source and taking into account the evidence;
• compare research results by their design and measures of association used.
Study course planning
| Study programme | Study semester | Program level | Study course category | Lecturers | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pharmacy, FF | 8 | Master’s | Required | Mirdza Kursīte, Solvita Kļaviņa-Makrecka |
