PURPOSE Epidemiologists have long contributed to policy efforts to address health disparities. Three examples illustrate how epidemiologists have addressed health disparities in the United States and abroad through a "social determinants of health" lens. METHODS To identify examples of how epidemiologic research has been applied to reduce health disparities, we queried epidemiologists engaged...

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states and in specified populations and the application to control health problems. Classified as either descriptive or analytical, a variety of epidemiologic approaches can be used to allow assessment of hypothesized risk factor exposure with disease outcomes. This article reviews salient aspects of epidemiologic ...

Race has been identified as an important risk factor for the development of sepsis and as a predictor of poor outcomes in sepsis. For example, black individuals have been demonstrated to be nearly twice as likely to develop sepsis and to have greater mortality from sepsis than white individuals. Recent data from a longitudinal cohort, which examined incident hospitalizations for infections occu...

BACKGROUND Quantiles are a staple of epidemiologic research: in contemporary epidemiologic practice, continuous variables are typically categorized into tertiles, quartiles and quintiles as a means to illustrate the relationship between a continuous exposure and a binary outcome. DISCUSSION In this paper we argue that this approach is highly problematic and present several potential alternati...

Causal diagrams have a long history of informal use and, more recently, have undergone formal development for applications in expert systems and robotics. We provide an introduction to these developments and their use in epidemiologic research. Causal diagrams can provide a starting point for identifying variables that must be measured and controlled to obtain unconfounded effect estimates. The...

INTRODUCTION Dental caries is still a social problem in many countries, including Poland. Through epidemiological studies conducted in index groups among children and adults, it is possible to monitor its progress and take appropriate action. The Podlaskie region is an area where the severity of dental caries in children has been the highest in the country for a few years, both in urban and rur...

AIMS This paper presents examples to illustrate the utility and limitations in the use of epidemiology in alcohol research and discusses some promising new directions. METHODS Review of literature, concentrating on epidemiological alcohol research with relevance to public health. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION Epidemiology offers tools for assessment of causes and effects of alcohol consumption as...

The ecologic study design is routinely used by epidemiologists in spite of its limitations. It is presently unknown how well the challenges of the design are dealt with in epidemiologic research. The purpose of this bibliometric review was to critically evaluate the characteristics, statistical methods, and reporting of results of modern cross-sectional ecologic papers. A search through 6 major...

Wenwu Yin and co-workers conducted a systematic review on challenges and needs to eliminate rabies in China (Yin et al., 2013 in this journal). Their analysis shows that there is considerable overrepresentation of laboratory and basic epidemiology research. On the other hand, information on effective control activities and policies are nearly absent. Currently we know enough to control and elim...

Prior epidemiologic research revealing cardioprotective effects of alcohol intake has systematically neglected lifetime exposure to alcohol, which may cause serious bias in conclusions regarding drinking and heart disease risk. Departing from use of an earlier interview schedule, the authors of the present 1996-2001 cohort study developed a self-administered Lifetime Drinking History questionna...