HLTH 240b Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Congenital Syphilis, Vital Record, National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey

• School: Yale University
• Department: Global Health Studies
• Course: HLTH 240b
• Professor: Marney White

Document Summary

Stats vs. epidemiology: descriptive stats: mean median mode, vs. analytic: testing, descriptive epidemiology: describing shape of epi event and identifying patterns, rate of transmission, demographic/geographic variations. Prior to change in definition many cases went underdiagnosed. Primary and secondary diagnoses did not increase proportionally to increase in congenital syphilis. Causes: changing criteria coupled with epidemic among pregnant woman. Epidemic attributed to crack cocaine: outbreak: increase in frequency of disease above what is expected in given population, but: apparent changes in disease frequency can be due to, change in case definition or local recording procedures. Increased interest leading to greater scrutiny by health care workers or increase in requests for testing by patients. Less older people engage in sexual activity/risks. If morbiditiy or mortality from a given disease changes over time, you can infer: some cause of the disease must also be changing, there is a(cid:374) (cid:862)artefa(cid:272)tual(cid:863) expla(cid:374)atio(cid:374) Differences in definition, diagnoses, reporting: changes in enumerating the populations denominator of the rate.