Postgraduate - UnitMPH5305 - Epidemiology: Concepts and applications

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Organisational Unit	Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
Offered	Monash Online Teaching Period 2 2015 (Online)
Coordinator(s)	Associate Professor Dianna Magliano and Professor Flavia Cicuttini

Synopsis

This unit will provide students with an introduction to key concepts and applications in epidemiology. Key concepts of epidemiology will be delivered throughout the unit, including; rates, sources of data, descriptive and analytical epidemiology, epidemiological study designs, critical appraisal of literature, screening, prevention, exposure assessment, outbreak investigation, confounding and bias.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

Explain and contextualise the purposes of descriptive and analytical epidemiology
Explain and contextualise the concepts of study questions, population, sampling, exposure assessment, bias and confounding
Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of different epidemiological study designs
Critically analyse epidemiological papers from the medical research and OHS literature
Evaluate the adequacy of exposure assessment in epidemiological studies
Interpret and communicate the results of epidemiological studies
Solve complex problems relating to the use of epidemiological concepts and study designs.

Assessment

Responses to 4 weekly forum discussion topics (45%)
Quiz (Multiple choice questions) (30 minutes) (10%)
Written essay (2,700 words) (45%)

Workload requirements

Off-campus: 20 hours per week for 6 weeks.

Chief examiner(s)

Associate Professor Dianna Magliano and Professor Flavia Cicuttini

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Public health

Co-requisites

Must be enrolled in courses 4528 or 4529.