Statistics in Public Health Quantitative Approaches to Public Health Problems

Public health strives to improve the health of human populations, and prevent disease, disability, and death. Statistics--the science of finding underlying patterns by analyzing variability and errors in collected data--is essential to the understanding of disease patterns in human populations. Other quantitative methods, such as economics, decision theory, and mathematics, now constitute integral parts of the scientific basis for priority-setting and evaluation in public health. This book provides a broad conceptual treatment of the statistical issues underlying core public health functions: outbreak investigations, policy development, economic and program evaluation, managed care, and program operations. The theoretical analysis is illustrated with examples from public health practice. For readers interested in a more detailed treatment, there are extensive references to specialized publications. The authors present a series of quantitative approaches that significantly help public health professionals solve the problems they confront in their day-to-day work. Unlike traditional how-to books in statistics, this volume starts with an overview of the range of problems encountered in public health practice, and then presents methods for facilitating decision making. Statistics in Public Health: Quantitative Approaches to Public Health Problems will serve as a comprehensive desk reference for public health practitioners and as a teaching text for students of public health.

Donna F. Stroup, Ph.D., M.Sc., is the Associate Director for Science in the Epidemiology Program Office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta.
Steven M. Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H., is Senior Research Scientist in Outcomes Research and Management at Merck &Co. He is the co-editor of Prevention Effectiveness: A Guide to Decision Analysis and Economic Evaluation (OUP, 1996), and Principles and Practice of Public Health Surveillance (OUP, 1994).