Epidemiology 1

Students shall acquire knowledge about the study of distribution and causes of disease in human populations. The course will introduce the students to epidemiological methods, study design, random and systematic error, i.e., bias and confounding, causality and effect modification.

After completing KLH3002 the student should be able to:
- Describe the characteristics of basic study designs relevant for population based and clinical research (cross sectional studies, case-control studies, cohort studies, as well as randomized controlled trials) and explain how these are used in epidemiological research
- Describe how measures of disease occurrence such as prevalence, incidence proportion, incidence rate are used, interpreted and calculated
- Describe how measures of association between exposure and disease such as risk difference, rate difference, risk ratio, rate ratio and odds ratio are used, interpreted and calculated
- Explain what is meant by precision in calculation of measures of disease and measures of association and interpret measures of precision
- Identify sources of systematic error in epidemiological studies like selection bias, information bias and confounding, and explain how these occur and may be dealt with
- Interpret and calculate the primary measures used for diagnostic testing such as sensitivity and specificity, predictive values of a positive and negative test
- Explain the differences between the terms causality and statistical association
- Explain the meaning of the terms effect modification and interaction

Lectures and home work assignments. The lectures will take place during the weeks that the master program of Clinical Health Science has intensive education.
The lectures will be given in English.