Disease Control

What's the best way to keep myself informed about the latest threats to my health?

Sometimes it's possible to answer a question like that by keeping up with the local media. There are very good reports in the media. For that reason, I ask my students to read the newspaper, keep track of media to find out what's happening. And then I would refer those people to the media to take a look and see what the latest reports are.

How do epidemiologists control disease?

Well, the methods that epidemiologists use to control disease tend to vary with the type of disease that they are looking at. For example, if we're speaking about specific infectious diseases, then the epidemiologist will try to look for the components of the cause of the disease: where did it occur, and what factors were associated with the disease. Then they will introduce controls at the point where the source of infection occurred. If we're speaking about a chronic disease, then the methods are somewhat different. For example, if the person is affected with cancer, or looking at cancer within the population, the epidemiologist would be interested in finding out which groups are at risk for cancer. For a specific form of cancer they will be looking at; what are the factors associated with the cancer, the form of cancer, and they will then try to make interventions in the person's lifestyle or in the society in order to bring these risk factors under control.

What are the 'Centers For Disease Control' or the 'CDC'?

Well the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, known as the CDC, is the government agency that is responsible for monitoring outbreaks of infectious disease and also the occurrence of other types of diseases, not only infectious diseases. They compile statistics related to the occurrence of disease, provide press releases about diseases that are happening in the world and our important repository for people that would like to learn more about specific diseases, infectious or otherwise.

What is the 'World Health Organization' or 'WHO'?

The World Health Organization plays a key role in terms of describing the occurrence of disease at the international level, and it is one of our key organizations in helping to monitor the occurrence of infectious diseases and other types of diseases from the worldwide perspective. It also cooperates with individual governments; for example, the Centers for Disease Control in increasing the value of the information that it provides to the world.

What is the 'Epidemiologic Intelligence Service' or 'EIS'?

The Epidemiologic Service is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control. Members of the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service (EIS) are often sent to local areas. It could be within the United States ,if there's an unusual occurrence of infectious diseases to try to track down and control the problem, or they could even be sent to other countries. An example being Africa where there was an outbreak of Ebola virus several years ago.

To what extent is epidemiology focused on infectious disease?

Infectious disease has remained an important aspect of epidemiology and of epidemiologic investigations and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. In many respects, infectious disease epidemiology forms one of the underpinnings of the discipline. However, other types of diseases such as the chronic diseases of long duration are now becoming an important subfield or discipline within epidemiology and illustrate the growing applications of growing epidemiology to diseases such as diabetes, obesity, tobacco use, and diseases associated with lifestyle.

To what extent does epidemiology focus on non-infectious diseases?

Epidemiology has a great role to play in non-infectious conditions, in many ways. Some of the important work, or much of the important work, that has been done in epidemiology nowadays relates to non-infectious diseases. I'm thinking particularly of molecular and genetic epidemiology and some of the techniques that it is using, although these are applied to infectious diseases as well as non-infectious conditions. The progress that has been made in curtailing the mortality rates from coronary heart disease, changes in morbidity and mortality from cancer, are examples of this.

Has the HIPAA privacy law affected epidemiological research?

The HIPAA law passed by the legislator in 1996 is an important law for epidemiological research since it includes a privacy rule to protect personal health information, even though the law has restricted access to patients' records to a certain extent. On the other hand, it has introduced some important safeguards needed to protect the rights of the individual regarding the release of their medical information. In this case, any information concerning ones health is released only after you get approval from that specific person, which is not so difficult. Often, organizations compile information known as Archival Datasets in which the specific identifying features of the patients have been deleted so that you cannot trace or track the individual and can proceed with your research.