Medical Epidemiology: Population Health and Effective Health Care, Fifth Edition

Understand the role of epidemiology in clinical medicine for the best patient outcomes possible

For nearly a quarter of a century, Medical Epidemiology has been the go-to text for understanding the principles and concepts of epidemiology and the relationship between population-based science and efficient patient care. It delivers the most current information on patterns of disease occurrence and risk factors – all clearly linked to clinical practice through the use of Health Scenarios in every chapter.

This edition of Medical Epidemiology has been completely rewritten to reflect the transformative changes in the manner in which epidemiologic methods are being utilized in today’s healthcare as well as the major shifts that have occurred at the policy level.

New chapters have been added on many timely topics, including global health, social determinants of health, health inequalities, comparative effectiveness, quality of care, variations in care, and implementation science. Increased information about evaluating, summarizing, and using evidence for improved patient care and outcomes gives this edition an even greater clinical focus.

Section I: Population Health

Chapter 1: Populations

a. Community

b. Region

c. Country

d. Global

e. Special populations

Chapter 2: Metrics

a. Prevalence

b. Incidence rate

c. Mortality rate

d. Infant mortality

e. Life expectancy

f. Years of potential life lost

g. Disability-adjusted life years

Chapter 3: Patterns of Occurrence

a. Age

b. Race/ethnicity

c. Gender

d. Geographic

e. Temporal

Chapter 4: Global Burden of Disease

a. Study design and goals

b. Mortality patterns

c. Healthy life expectancy

d. Disability-adjusted life years

e. Risk factors

Chapter 5: Social Determinants of Health

a. Definition

b. Whitehall Study

c. Education

d. Income

e. Housing

f. Food security

g. Physical and social environment

Chapter 6: Health Disparities

a. Health Inequities

b. Social determinants

c. Culture

d. Discrimination

e. Access to care

f. Quality of care

Section II. Collecting Evidence for Medical Practice

Chapter 7: Clinical trials

a. Design

b. Subject selection

c. Randomization

d. Blinding

e. Analysis

f. Sample size

g. Limitations

Chapter 8: Cohort studies

a. Design

b. Subject selection

c. Exposure assessment

d. Analysis

e. Limitations

Chapter 9: Case-control studies

a. Design

b. Subject selection

c. Matching

d. Exposure assessment

e. Analysis

f. Limitations

Chapter 10: Diagnostic tests

a. Sensitivity and specificity

b. Positive and negative predictive value

c. Likelihood ratios

d. ROC Curves

e. Limitations

Section III. Assessing Evidence for Medical Practice

Chapter 11: Comparative effectiveness

a. Definition

b. Objectives

c. Approaches

d. Systematic reviews

e. PICOTS principles

Chapter 12: Planning a review

a. Selecting a topic

b. Key informants

c. Analytic framework

Chapter 13: Finding evidence

a. Study eligibility

b. Types of studies

c. Grey literature

d. Possible bias

e. Search process

f. Extracting data

g. Reporting methods

Chapter 14: Assessing the evidence

a. Data extraction

b. Study quality

c. Study applicability

d. Summary table

e. Evidence Maps

Chapter 15: Quantitative synthesis

a. Summary measures

b. Heterogeneous results

c. Subgroup analysis

d. Grading strength of evidence

e. Reporting results