Graduate Course Directory and Schedules

This is the third course in the epidemiology research methods series and is designed to develop your ability to apply your knowledge and skills to the evaluation of cause. Students will become familiar with epidemiologic concepts of disease causation, develop skills in assessing the epidemiologic literature to arrive at causal conclusions, and learn to use those assessments and conclusions to arrive at justifiable plans for action. Early in the academic quarter, lecture presentations and readings will provide the key epidemiologic concepts and principles involved in making judgments about causation. Discussions in Small Groups will focus on seminal journal articles to reinforce students’ understanding of these concepts. Case studies will also be covered in Small Groups, in which students will review and discuss sets of papers on public health topics that require a rigorous assessment of cause. For each of these topics, students will complete formal written papers (assessments) and participate in discussions using an evaluation framework developed for this course. This framework involves assessing the quality and validity of the epidemiologic evidence to support causation and recommending a course of action to protect public health. Students will share the responsibility of leading the Small Groups, and will be assigned a week to lead the class discussion.

Prerequisites:

1. EPI 512/612 Epidemiology I
2. EPI 513/613 Epidemiology II: Methods
3. BSTA 511/611 Estimation & Hypothesis Testing for Applied Biostatistics
4. BSTA 612/612 Linear Models