This course will enhance your understanding of public health epidemiology, the science upon which public health is based. Public health epidemiology involves describing and interpreting geographical and temporal patterns in population health, identifying prevention strategies, and estimating and evaluating the impact of risk factors and preventive measures on population health. It is therefore essential to have a thorough understanding of public health epidemiology if your work or study involves any public health-related issues. This course is therefore highly suited to epidemiologists in universities, hospitals, municipal health services and other governmental health organizations, and to PhD candidates working on an epidemiological or public health thesis.
Public health epidemiology: from basic principles to future trends
You will start by learning the basic principles of public health epidemiology, illustrated by the main successes in this field in the past. We will focus on important measures of population health, their interpretation and use in public health policy. You will learn how to calculate the effect of an exposure on life expectancy and what part of this exposure can be attributed to the development of a disease. You will also weigh and compare the effects of two prevention strategies: intervening in individuals at high risk for developing a disease, versus introducing preventive measures for the whole population. The societal, economic and health dilemmas involved in introducing population measures will be illustrated by the smoking ban. This online medical course will also cover the persistent socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in health, including epidemiological and statistical methods, and you will learn the basic principles of how future trends in population health are modeled.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
• Describe the typical features of public health and public health epidemiology
• Weigh and compare the effects of high-risk versus population strategies for prevention
In particular, you will be able to:
• Reproduce at least 5 different measures of population health, their interpretation and use in public health policy or practice
• Calculate life expectancy from life-table data and construct survival curves
• Describe dilemmas in the implementation of population measures for smoking reduction from a societal, economical and health perspective
• Calculate the effect of exposure to risk factors on life expectancy and attributable fraction
• Weigh and interpret the contribution of risk factors to population health
• Describe types of input required to model future trends in population health
• Describe the main underlying factors causing certain patterns in population health
• Apply epidemiological methods to study ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in population health
• Interpret results from multilevel analysis to disentangle effects of a shared environment (contextual effects) and individual risk factors on population health
• General introduction into public health epidemiology and the effects of high-risk and population strategies for prevention on population health
• Public health aspects of active and passive smoking to illustrate the general principles, with a special focus on the political, economical and individual perspectives on smoking reduction as a population strategy
• Patterns in population health across regions or the world and across socioeconomic and ethnic groups
• Projections of future population health and potential health gain by preventive policy measures
To successfully complete this course, you need to actively participate in the discussion forums and complete the learning unit assignments, including:
• Individual and group assignments
• A final assignment
The final assignment is not compulsory. However, if you want to receive the Course Certificate and the credits, it is obligatory to successfully complete the final assignment. You are allowed to redo the exam once.
To enroll in this course, you need:
• A BSc degree
• Access to the program SPSS
• A basic knowledge of epidemiological definitions (as taught in Study Design in Etiologic Research)
• A basic knowledge of statistics (as taught in Introduction to Statistics)
• Sufficient proficiency in English reading and writing
We offer discounts for participants from Low- and Lower-middle-income Countries. Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht employees and students are eligible for a 10% discount. Unfortunately, we don’t offer any scholarships.
No, there aren’t any set times you should be online as it is an asynchronous course. All the web lectures are already pre-recorded. However there will be deadlines each week (during the week as well on weekends). Each week consists of approximately 14 study hours. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log in several times per week. Furthermore, you should be aware that the teacher and the e-moderator are off on weekends.
No, this is not possible because the course contains group assignments, so you can’t work ahead. Each week, a new learning unit will be made available. This means that not all the learning units are open simultaneously. Additionally, you can’t catch up on the course because there are deadlines to meet every week.
If you have ordered a course and paid immediately, you will receive an email with your login details. Sometimes, this email ends up in your spam folder. If you already have an existing account, simply log in to our learning environment. The course you just ordered will be visible in your account. If you paid by invoice, you will receive your login credentials as soon as the invoice is paid. If the course is starting soon and you haven’t received your login details, please reach out to us at info@elevatehealth.eu to inquire about the payment status.
When you have completed all the assignments or have finished the exam with a good grade, you will receive an official certificate from Utrecht University. All academic certificates issued by Utrecht University will be sent by mail to the address registered in your account. Since these certificates are official documents, they cannot be sent by email.
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