An Introduction to Epidemiology for Health Professionals

An Introduction to Epidemiology for Health Professionals Jorn Olsen, Kaare Christensen, Jeff Murray, and Anders Ekbom   Who gets sick? What factors—genetic, environmental, social—contribute to their illness? Easy enough to ask, but the answers are be

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Series Editors Wolfgang Ahrens Iris Pigeot

For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/7251

Jørn Olsen · Kaare Christensen · Jeff Murray · Anders Ekbom

An Introduction to Epidemiology for Health Professionals

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Jørn Olsen School of Public Health University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095-1772 Box 951772 USA [email protected]

Kaare Christensen Institute of Public Health University of Southern Denmark Sdr. Boulevard 23 A 5000 Odense C Denmark [email protected]

Jeff Murray, MD Department of Pediatrics 2182 MedLabs University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52245 USA [email protected]

Anders Ekbom Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institute SE-171 76 Stockholm Sweden [email protected]

ISSN 1869-7933 e-ISSN 1869-7941 ISBN 978-1-4419-1496-5 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-1497-2 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1497-2 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922282 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to press, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Preface

There are many good epidemiology textbooks on the market, but most of these are addressed to students of public health or people who do clinical research with epidemiologic methods. There is a need for a short introduction on how epidemiologic methods are used in public health, genetic and clinical epidemiology, because health professionals need to know basic epidemiologic methods covering etiologic as well as prognostic factors of diseases. They need to know more about methodology than introductory texts on public health have to offer. In some health faculties, epidemiology is not even part of the teaching curriculum. We believe this to be a serious mistake. Medical students are students of all aspects of diseases and health. Without knowing something about epidemiology the clinicians and other health professionals cannot read a growing part of the scientific literature in any reasonably critica