Dr. Alexander explained that public health deals with several factors: population, health policy, environmental health, economics, social behavior and medicine. I honestly found this lecture very interesting because she gave us real life examples dealing with this factors, and through this examples she was able to explain how improvements in Public Health have enormously contributed to declines in the mortality rate and disappearance of several contagious diseases. The one that stuck to me the most was sanitation, because it is something that nowadays we take for granted, without realizing how much harder and less healthy our lives would be without it.
The lecture on Epidemiology was a lot more technical, but it helped me understand how statistics are so important for the study of Public Health. My favorite part was learning about how studies in epidemiology started when a man named John Snow traced the incidence of cholera in London back to the water pumps in which people were getting their water. We also learned the difference between "incidence" and "prevalence" (in epidemiological terms) and the basic math in some association methods used to trace causality or correlation. It made me realize the importance of the organization and presentation of data for Public Health studies.
I also find it interesting how sanitation was at one point an enormous public health issue, but know is something our society takes for granted. It has been interesting to see the development of public health, and the policies and issues that have been dealt with. It is always interesting to find out the origins of things, so I enjoyed that your favorite part of the epidemiology lecture was its origins.
ReplyDelete