Abstract: Chapter 3 was about “Epidemiology” which is the study of distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations. Chapter 3 provided us with a ton of terms. We learn the different terms for types of diseases. There can be an acute disease, which lasts under 3 months such as the common cold or chicken pox, or there can be chronic diseases which lasts longer than 3 months sometimes for life such as diabetes. We learn terms of different rates and what they measure (death, birth, illness among a population, etc). We learn terms about different studies such as an analytic study or a cohort study. We also learn WHY it’s important to have Epidemiologists (people who study outbreaks of disease, injury and death in the human population). They help us to target where and from what people are getting sick and which helps us stop it before an epidemic occurs (also another term given). Along with this there was a brief history on Epidemiology itself. Many statistics were also given this chapter including life expectancy (which also has subcategories like disability-adjusted life years or health-adjusted life expectancy). Lastly we learned about different types of ways Epidemiologists conduct studies on the population to collect the data for the statistics and rates.
Reflection: As a group we collectively agreed this chapter was FULL of many terms. It was very information dense and a lot was thrown at us all at once. Even when trying to write the abstract for our blog I felt like I was missing a ton of information and terms I should've been adding in. The chapter was a bit overwhelming but we all felt like Epidemiology was such an important part of Community Health that it couldn't be a chapter for "light reading."
Our group was really surprised at how in-depth certain parts of Epidemiology were. For example we had no clue that "life expectancy" actually went deeper. There is health adjusted life expectancy or disability-adjusted life years.
Mostly our group reacted and talked about whether or not we would ever want a career involving Epidemiology. All of us concluded that we wouldn't. We believe it's an important part of the field but none of us have an interest in it. Most of us want to work directly with the community not just analyze it. We have respect for epidemiologists, we just wouldn't want to be one.
I agree with this group on how a lot of people didn't realize that 'life expectancy' went further. I didn't know that it had major studies focusing on male & female that had the same or different surrondings. I also didn't realize that depending on what year you were born you can have different health issues than people born five years later because of the surronding activity. (Marissa)
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