Chapter 3 focused primarily on the overview of epidemiology which is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease and injuries in the community. They want to know the details surrounding the sicknesses. This profession encompasses a lot of mathematical data which makes it interesting. We've never fully understood everything an epidemiologist does until we finished reading this chapter. Also, a lot of definitions were provided in these chapters which we never knew which helped us gain knowledge! It definitely seems like a busy and interesting profession. Also, we learned a lot about all the different studies and surveys done to collect data. The purpose of the three different types of studies is to determine the cause of injury, disease, and death in the community and to provide information which will assist in controlling current outbreaks and preventing future ones. These studies are a source of primary prevention as a way of educating people to make the right decisions based on the data provided.
In Chapter 4, we learned there are different types of diseases: acute and chronic. Acute diseases last for less than three months while chronic diseases can last longer than three months. Also, they can be classified as communicable (infectious) or noncommunicable (noninfectious). The noncommunicable diseases are the ones we should be worried about because many of them are some leading causes of death. It is important to realize that diseases can be significantly reduced by using primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. An example of these would be educating people (primary), screening (secondary), and re-educating people (tertiary). It takes both individual and community efforts to reduce diseases though which will end up making deaths not so common from these diseases. The development of knowledge about disease is quite obvious in both of these chapters. With technology and this type of knowledge, we hope people will start finding cures easier and making right choices to eliminate possible diseases.
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I thought that these chapters were really dry but that it was interesting to see how much math and extra work goes into being an epidemiologist-it is an incredibly important profession that I didn't know existed and now have a lot of respect for. I agree that noncommunicable diseases are what we should be most concerned about as communicable diseases are something that can be prevented on a personal level with personal hygiene practices.
ReplyDelete-Cassie