“Epidemiology: A Very Short Introduction” by Rodolfo Saracci

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A good introduction to the topic of Epidemiology: what it is, what it does and how does society benefit from it. You will get a good idea of how epidemiology works and how it benefits society by informing public health and keeping people healthy.

The book starts with the history of epidemiology and how it can determine the causes of diseases and epidemics in early history, even though the causes of diseases were not yet known. The book then goes into how epidemiology uses statistics and other tools to measure the health of people.

Other chapters describe how epidemiology is used to search for the cause of a disease, establishing the cause of it and how to control a disease. Various examples, like cancer caused by smoking, the human papillomavirus, diabeties, etc. are used to show how epidemiology is used.

Finally, several chapters are used to show how epidemiology is used to examine the health of the public in general. Several challenges to epidemiology in the form of genetic consent and storage of samples for future studies are also highlighted.

Book read from 2020/04/22 to 2020/04/28