{"id":18839,"date":"2022-10-06T03:59:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T03:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/de\/?post_type=product&p=18839"},"modified":"2022-10-06T03:59:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T03:59:54","slug":"foundations-of-epidemiology","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/de\/foundations-of-epidemiology\/","title":{"rendered":"Foundations of Epidemiology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Understanding human health\u2014defined by the World Health Organization<\/a> (WHO) as a \u201cstate of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity\u201di\u2014is vital. Why are these people sick but those people aren\u2019t? What can we do to improve health for everyone? Improved health in turn leads to gains in economic, social, educational, and other arenas, all of which are necessary for a successful, functioning society.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, to understand human health, we must study humans\u2014and humans are extremely difficult to study. Unlike laboratory-based sciences, where all conditions are under the control of the scientist, conducting scientific studies with human participants includes a host of complications and potential stumbling blocks. First and foremost, humans do not exist in controlled settings like laboratories. Each person has their own job, their own preferred foods, their own sleep schedule, their own hobbies, their own genetics, their own stress levels, their own set of environmental and social settings\u2014all of which affect health. Since no two people are exactly alike, and since we cannot really tell people what to do, studying them is difficult.<\/p>\n

Epidemiology is the set of tools we use to study human health. As such, it is not a topic itself per se, but rather a set of research methods that are then applied to other health-related topics (kinesiology<\/a>, infectious disease, cardiology<\/a>, child development, etc.). Epidemiology can help answer questions such as the following:<\/p>\n