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| Preface | |
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| Epidemiology is... | |
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| A case of food poisoning | |
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| Subdisciplines of epidemiology | |
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| On epidemics | |
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| An historical epidemic | |
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| The beginnings | |
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| What does epidemiology offer? | |
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| What do epidemiologists do? | |
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| A natural experiment | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| References | |
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| How long is a piece of string? Measuring disease frequency | |
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| What are we measuring? | |
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| Prevalence and incidence | |
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| Measuring disease in epidemiological studies | |
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| Measuring disease occurrence using routine data | |
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| Other measures commonly used in public health | |
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| Measures of mortality related to childbirth and early life | |
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| Other measures of health status | |
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| Summary | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Who, what, where and when? Finding and using public health data | |
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| Which data? | |
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| Raw health data | |
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| Summary health data | |
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| Gaining access to the data | |
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| References | |
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| Watching not waiting: surveillance and epidemiological intelligence | |
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| The scope of surveillance | |
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| Types of surveillance | |
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| Surveillance in practice | |
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| Evaluation of surveillance | |
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| Summary | |
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| References | |
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| Why? Linking exposure and disease | |
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| Looking for associations | |
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| Ratio measures (relative risk) | |
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| Difference measures (attributable risk) | |
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| Relative risk versus attributable risk | |
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| Case-control studies | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Solid foundations: research designs for public health | |
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| Types of study | |
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| Descriptive studies | |
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| Analytic studies | |
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| Intervention studies or experiments | |
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| References | |
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| All that glitters is not gold: the problem of error | |
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| Error | |
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| Subject selection | |
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| Measurement or information error | |
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| Assessment of the likely effects of error on the results of a study | |
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| Summary | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Muddied waters: the challenge of confounding | |
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| Is alcohol a risk factor for lung cancer? | |
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| Criteria for a confounder | |
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| The effects of confounding | |
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| Control of confounding | |
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| Confounding: the bottom line | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Bringing it together: reading and writing papers in practice | |
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| The research question and study design | |
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| The study sample: selection bias | |
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| Measuring disease and exposure: measurement bias | |
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| Confounding | |
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| Chance | |
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| Study validity | |
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| Descriptive studies | |
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| Writing papers | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Who sank the boat? Association and causation | |
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| What do we mean by a cause? | |
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| Association versus causation | |
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| Evaluating causation | |
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| Evaluating causality in practice: does H. pylori cause stomach cancer? | |
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| And then what? | |
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| References | |
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| Assembling the building blocks: reviews and their uses | |
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| Identifying the literature | |
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| Different types of study | |
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| Summarising the data | |
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| Assessment of causality | |
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| Assessing the quality of a systematic review | |
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| Making judgements in practice | |
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| The end result | |
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| References | |
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| Outbreaks, epidemics and clusters | |
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| Outbreaks, epidemics, endemics and clusters | |
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| Rare disease clusters | |
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| Epidemiology of infectious diseases | |
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| A causal model | |
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| What influences the spread of infectious diseases? | |
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| Epidemics or outbreaks | |
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| Investigating outbreaks | |
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| Tuberculosis: a case study | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| Prevention: better than cure? | |
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| Disease prevention in public health | |
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| The scope for preventive medicine | |
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| Strategies for prevention | |
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| References | |
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| Early detection: what benefits at what cost? | |
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| Why screen? | |
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| The requirements of a screening programme | |
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| The screening programme | |
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| Evaluation of a screening programme | |
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| The negative consequences of a screening programme | |
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| Summary | |
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| Questions | |
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| References | |
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| A final word... | |
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| What does the future hold for epidemiology? | |
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| References | |
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| Answers to questions | |
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| Direct standardisation | |
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| Standard populations | |
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| Calculating cumulative incidence and lifetime risk from routine data | |
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| Indirect standardisation | |
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| The Mantel-Haenszel method for calculating pooled odds ratios | |
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| Index | |