Epidemiology is defined as a study upon the people. Now whenever a disease outbreak occurs in an area, state, nation. The public health worker tries to identify the source of infection and disease. There is types of epidemiology takes part. Different types of epidemiologist works in different sector study the population and find out the cause of disease outbreak.
Epidemiology has been divided into two part, first is based on the approaches it used while studying population and second is on the basis of specific field it is work for.
Types of epidemiology based on the study design or approaches
- Descriptive epidemiology
- Analytical epidemiology
- Experimental epidemiology
Descriptive Epidemiology
Descriptive epidemiology is the first response of any outbreak happen anywhere in the world. It answer the most fundamental question like whom it cause, where it occur and when it occur. Researcher dont directly find this answers but they trak the person, place and time.
- Person – Age, gender, socioeconomic status
- Place – location, nation, urban or rural areas
- Time – daily, monthly, annually, seasonal
By answering above questions researcher get most of data of who, where and when disease is occured, so as to help the epidemiologist to identify its centre.
Analytical epidemiology
Analytical epidemiology is the second step of epidemiological research. The descriptive epidemiology provides hypothesis that is then tested in the analytical epidemiology. It checks the relation between the cause and effect established in the descriptive epidemiology.
It is done via studies like cohort study, case control study and cross sectional study. All this study take certain population and compare with each other to find out the is there any relation between the cause and disease.
Experimental epidemiology
In experimental epidemiology, researcher test a particular intervention, treatment, drug or procedure. The method used is Randomized controlled trail.
Types by Specialized field
- Infectious disease epidemiology – deals with the infections, communicable diseases like covid 19, influenza, malaria etc.
- Chronic disease epidemiology – It study the chronic disease such as DM, cardiovascular disease, obesity etc.
- Environmental epidemiology – It study the air pollution, industrial pollution, climate change etc.
- Social epidemiology – It study various social groups their live, socioeconomic status, education, and other determinants of health.
Other types of epidemiology are,
- Cancer epidemiology
- Occupational epidemiology
- Molecular epidemiology
- Genetic epidemiology
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