HLSC 3820U Lecture 5: Field Investigations and RCT
Document Summary
Defined as the application of epidemiology and public health under a set of general conditions: Timely response (demanded because of a high potential for mortality) Travel (epidemiologist must travel to and work in the field to solve the problem) Unusual aggregation, real or perceived, of health events that are grouped in time and space and are reported to a health agency. Occurs in response sudden introduction into environment of: Involve reviewing unusual numbers of health related events grouped together by time and location. Identify whether the number of cases is above expected. Initial response: assessment, conduct feasibility study, etiologic investigation. Step 1: establish the existence of an outbreak. Attack rates are appropriate stats for investigation disease outbreaks. Describe rapidly occurring new cases of disease in a well-defined population over a limited time period. Usually calculated by person characteristics in order to identify high-risk groups. Assessment of clinical findings should be done to ensure reliability and correctness of findings.
