At the end of this course, you will be able to:
interpret scientific articles dealing with these subjects, and you will be prepared to pursue specialised teaching in epidemiology and public health.
Monitoring diseases and carrying out population-based surveys to identify their causes (behaviours, environmental exposure, and genetic factors): such is the role of epidemiology, the principles and methods of which you will learn during this course.
The course begins with a presentation of the key principles of descriptive epidemiology (monitoring of diseases, investigation of epidemics) and analytical epidemiology (identification of disease risk factors). Principal risk indicators, the formulation of a scientific hypothesis, the study schemes used in population-based surveys, taking sampling fluctuations into account, the statistical analysis of results and the interpretation of bias: all of these will be explained and illustrated by examples and case studies drawn from the real world.
The course will also address the main principles of causality and the levels of proof required today to be able to say that a given “exposure” is responsible for a disease.
Format: 5 videos of 10-15 minutes every week for six weeks (except for the last week, where the last video will be replaced by a final exam, making 29 videos in total).
There are no prerequisites, although knowledge of biostatistics would be useful for hypothesis tests. What about medical knowledge? Of course, the more you know, the better, but it is far from necessary. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the majority of public health specialists are not doctors.
Note: two of the case studies are drawn from scientific articles in English. An understanding of written English will therefore be important for these two exercises.
Evaluation: the students will be able to test their knowledge regularly via:
MCQs offered at the end of the sequence (two per sequence; 5 minutes of personal work)
MCQs and open questions relating to the scientific articles to be analysed (three in total over the course: allow two hours’ work for each article analysis ). The MCQs will be corrected electronically and the open questions will be explained with a teaching video.
The final assessment, the only way to obtain a course completion certificate, will be in the form of MCQs at the end of the mooc.
An authenticated CERTIFICATE worth 2 ECTS can be delivered for 60 euros, provided that you have enrolled at the CNAM.
Categories
Not essential for this course, but useful for those who would like to go deeper:
“Epidemiology in medicine” (C.H. Hennekens, J.E. Buring). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Editions
You are free to:
Under the following terms:
"All rights reserved" is a copyright formality indicating that the copyright holder reserves, or holds for its own use, all the rights provided by copyright law.