Discussion board and reply to two peers.

Discussion board and reply to two peers.

Unit 7 Discussion

In descriptive epidemiology, the objective is to describe a specific health condition from three different perspectives: time, person, and place. For example, some diseases are seasonal. Some people are more at risk for a particular illness than others. Some diseases are endemic in one country but not in others. After completing the assigned reading, select your topic and apply it to a particular health condition.

As you complete this unit’s readings, look for the following concepts:

  • determinants
  • surveillance
  • case definition
  • time, person, and place

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). Lesson 1: Introduction to Epidemiology. In Principles of Epidemiology. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ophss/csels/dsepd/ss1978

  • Lesson Overview
  • Section 1: Definition of Epidemiology
  • Section 2: Historical Evolution of Epidemiology
  • Section 3: Uses
  • Section 4: Core Epidemiologic Functions
  • Section 5: The Epidemiologic Approach
  • Section 6: Descriptive Epidemiology

Bonita, Ruth, Beaglehole, Robert, Kjellström, Tord & World Health Organization. (‎2006)‎. Basic epidemiology, 2nd ed. Geneva: World Health Organization. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43…

  • Chapter 3, pages 39‒44

Karim: Unit 7

Rony Karim posted Sep 9, 2020 6:45 PM

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Good afternoon class. This week we are discussing descriptive epidemiology. It makes perfect sense that we aim to characterize epidemiologic events. Descriptive epidemiology uses 5W’s seeing if we can analyze data to reveal factors and variables that affect or increases the likelihood of these events to occur. Using the analyzed data, epidemiologists can identify a person, place or time that has increased likelihood or chance of disease.

This week’s discussion post I was assigned the descriptive epidemiology characteristic of “person”. In this context, a person aims to identify attributes of people such as age, race and sex that puts a person in a higher risk category. There are several other person categories that epidemiologists use: a person’s immune status, marital status, activities such as occupation, use of medications/tobacco/drugs, socioeconomic status, and access to medical care. Of all these variables, age is one of the most common and most important attributes.

With the unique examples of attributes that describe the descriptive epidemiology, I will give an example of a current real-life situation. American Indian and Alaska Natives suffer from several disproportionate health disparities. This specific ethnic category of people has the highest rates of death among other Americans for several diseases. Chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, diabetes, and several mental health conditions are areas American Indian and Alaskan Natives have the highest rates of incidence when compared to other ethnic categories in the United States of America.

Disparities | Fact Sheets. (2013, January 1). Newsroom. https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/

Principles of Epidemiology | Lesson 1—Section 6. (2020, May 11). https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section6.html

Unit 7 DB

Sarah Brice posted Sep 9, 2020 8:26 AM

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Hello,

For this weeks discussion board post I have been assigned the topic of “time” as it relates to health and a certain health condition. While doing the reading for this unit, the CDC book “Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice” spoke briefly on time pertaining to illnesses and diseases. The sub-chapter within lesson 1 mentioned time in a different manner than I had originally thought about before doing the reading. Time, within health care, can either be described as the amount of time it takes for a disease or illness to infect and shows signs within a persons body, or the amount of time the disease needs to incubate. In addition, like it was mentioned in the DB prompt, time can be related to a season or time period that a certain disease or illness thrives within.

An example of an illness/disease that uses time in the sense of incubation period is shingles, this is something that will sit dormant within the spinal cord of individuals that had chicken pox and over time the virus comes out and causes shingles, or itchy red blisters over the individuals body.

An example of an illness that uses time in the sense of seasons is the flu. While some people can get the flu during other times of the year, it is very common for the winter to be called “Flu Season” because this illness thrives within the weather and seasonal conditions that take place during winter months.

Reference:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). Lesson 1: Introduction to Epidemiology

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