Epidemiology

Contagion, hypothesizes what the world would go through in the event of a major health crisis and it illustrates the importance of the epidemiology field as it relates to the well-being of the population. The film exemplifies the epidemiology concepts of a pandemic, communicable diseases and disease prevention. This paper will relate these three concepts as they correspond to the epidemiology chapter in our community health text.

Descriptive epidemiology focus on how a disease is spread within a population. This can be done in three different approaches such as counts, case series, and cross-sectional studies. The observation of the Amish population in Lancaster, PA favors the application of the cross sectional method of descriptive epidemiology.

Incidence is the rate of new or recently analyzed found diseases. It is for the most part reported as the quantity of new cases happening inside of a duration of time (i.e., every month, every year). It is more important when the incidence rate is accounted for as a small amount of the general public at danger of getting a disease (i.e., per 100,000 or per million population). Clearly, the accuracy of incidence rate information relies on the exactness of diagnosis and reporting of the infection. To report the rate of treatment of new cases following to these are known, even though not all incidence rates are untreated and not reported. Incidence rates are also categorized

Through various examples of epidemics can be seen that the distribution methods are different but are all linked to the development of the affected country and changing it are going through. Whether through the development of international trade, the discovery of new land or development of African countries. Each had dramatic consequences.

There are several steps involved in the management of an outbreak. Once an outbreak situation is determined, management begins with verifying the diagnosis and creating a case definition (CDC, 2006). Information is recorded once cases are found. This information includes organizing the data and summarizing it in regards to who was infected, when the illness started, and where they might have been exposed (Macha & McDough). Hypothesis are created, evaluated and tested. Next, the lab evidence must be compared and reconciled. According to Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice

In Epidemiology, it is useful to find the source of the disease you can take action to rid or treat the source, thus eradicating transmission of future disease cases. John looked at the relationships between the biological, social, and environmental factors, such as (Goldstein, 2012):

The Factors that constitute traditional epidemiology is the interactions and interdependence of the agent, host, environment, and time (Merrill, 2006). The agent acts like the disease and the host is an animal or person who had contracted the disease. The environment affects the disease and the person based on the location and weather. The time is a measure of how long the person is sick and when the person die.

Epidemiology is a discipline that describes, quantifies, and postulates causal mechanisms for health phenomena in populations (Friis & Sellers, 2014). They are applied to better understand, perhaps manage population’s health challenges. Epidemiology can be applied to the study of a deadly virus called Ebola. The Ebola virus disease was identified in 1976, and fatalities peaked due to uncontrolled outbreaks starting in Central Africa.

When reading your post, I noticed you chose surveillance as the core function of great relevance to you. Surveillance, in epidemiology, used to be focused on the spread of epidemics as the name implies, nowadays, it progressed from that to being interested about other issues of health. For example, it is also interested about the incidence of cardiovascular disease is certain populations, diabetes, obesity, etc. It has to do with the distribution of diseases and factors related to health.

John Snow developed the idea of epidemiology during his work on cholera. Modern epidemiology is the study of diseases, in 1854, there was no CDC and when there was an outbreak it was merely overlooked or people would blame it on something with no proof like miasma. When Snow started using a time-space map it revolutionized the era creating epidemiology, Snow didn’t know at the time but we still use time-space maps in modern epidemiology. “Without information on numbers of deaths from cholera and the street address of each victim, Snow's mapping of mortality in relation to the siting of water pumps would not have been possible”(AbouZahr). Now we use these same techniques, The CDC still uses these techniques to find and locate the source of a problem. Hospitals ask when you're really sick if you have been near certain things such as asbestos, this allows the CDC to relate diseases to different areas allowing for the fix of the problem and prevention of the disease to

Epidemics can easily occur in areas introduced to the disease or similar strains. This means that people won’t have a built up immunity to it to defend against it, the disease will spread very quickly and affect everyone.

Epidemiology Hippocrates is known as the father of medicine and was the first person to study epidemiology. As we know, epidemiology is the study of disease incidence, prevalence, and distribution that helps control a disease or pathogen from occurring or spreading. Hippocrates understood and observed that different diseases occur in many different locations. He made the correlation between a specific disease and how they thrive in certain environments. Hippocrates also came up with the terms epidemic, endemic, and pandemic, which are commonly adapted terms used in today’s medical field to classify outbreaks that occur in specific populations or geographical locations.

The ability to organization and apply effective disease outbreak management is a collaborative and multidisciplinary effort. An effective approach involves skills in the areas of public health, medicine, epidemiology, laboratory diagnostics, and environmental health. Early recognition of unusual clusters of illness and swift actions in response are essential for effective management of outbreaks. When illness is identified early and appropriate control measures are implemented in a quick manner, these outbreaks are usually controlled quickly.

Determinants of health fall under several broad categories, such as, policymaking, social factors, health services, individual behavior, biology and genetics. Also include health sectors like education, housing, transportation, agriculture and environment that can be important allies in population health. Different social, economic and cultural factors determine a person’s health, meaning that people living in the same community or of the same age, can have different chances of good health.

Disease surveillance systems and health data sources provide the raw information necessary to monitor trends in health and disease. Descriptive epidemiology provides a way of organizing and analyzing these data in order to understand variations in disease frequency in an area over time, and how varies among people based on a host of personal characteristics (person, place, and time). This makes it possible to identify trends in health and disease and also provides a means of planning resources for populations. It is also important for generating possible explanations about the determinants of health and disease.