Ateneo - UPO

Principles of hygiene and public health; Epidemiological measures of occurrence and association; the most important types of epidemiological studies; criteria to evaluate causality of an association in Medicine; proximal and distal determinants of health; the Global Burden of Disease; primary, secondary and tertiary prevention; application of preventive strategies; the four stages of risk assessment.

Barbuti, Fara, Giammanco. Igiene, medicina preventiva, Sanità Pubblica Edises Editore. 2022

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
To know the definition of hygiene and public health; To understand the elements in the design and conduct of the most important types of epidemiological studies; To know the most important sources of bias in epidemiological studies. To understand the criteria to evaluate causality of an association in Medicine. To know the most important determinants of health in Italy and worldwide. To know the key features of the Global Burden of Disease project. To know the differences between primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. To know the four stages of risk assessment.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
To be able to calculate measures of frequency and association.

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Interactive lectures. Presentations in MS-Powerpoint format.

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Written exam including Single Best Answer, Open ended questions, and numerical exercises. In particular, open ended questions and numerical exercises will evaluate the ability of the student to calculate basic epidemiological measures.

General principles of Public Health. Definition of Hygiene and Public Health. The concept of Health and its evolution over time.
Epidemiological methods for Public Health. Health indicators: incidence, mortality, prevalence, survival; measures of frequency and association.
Main Epidemiological studies: clinical trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, cross-sectional studies, descriptive studies.
Sources of uncertainty in epidemiology: the role of chance, bias and confounding.
Causal inference in Epidemiology. The example of IARC monographs.
Determinants of health. Proximal and distal determinants of health. The Global Burden of Disease project.
Preventive interventions. Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Preventive strategies towards individuals and populations. Vaccinations. Screening.
The four stages of risk assessment according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Hazard identification, Dose response-assessment, exposure assessment, risk characterization. Difference hazard and risk. The concept of exposure and dose. Methods of exposure quantification applied to environmental health: point of contact, scenario evaluation, dose reconstruction.

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
To know the most important sources of epidemiological data. To understand the elements in the design and conduct of the most important types of epidemiological studies. To know the most important sources of bias in epidemiological studies. To understand the criteria to evaluate causality of an association in Medicine. To know the most important determinants of health in Italy and worldwide. To know the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. To know the key features of the process of risk assessment.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING to be able to calculate measures of frequency and association.