What is the relevance of epidemiology to decision-making in health services? If our ability to launch large-scale experimental studies of health services is limited, what are some alternative approaches to study design? How can we best make use of routinely collected data from health information systems? How can we best synthesize information to make more reasonable inferences? These are some of the questions that Epidemiology and Health Services tries to answer.L The book starts with three chapters on strategies for problem investigation, problem solving, and program development and evaluation. These are followed by nine chapters that give a theoretical overview of specific methods and then present case studies. The cases are based on important investigations of health services and are followed by questions and discussions that guide readers through the most salient issues of these studies.LThis is a book that addresses the needs of a broad spectrum of health professionals. It will help health service administrators, managers and other professional design and conduct evaluative and intervention research on the delivery of health services. And it will give epidemiology and public health students a wider perspective on applicatons of the discipline.

This practical guide to survival data and its analysis for readers with a minimal background in statistics shows why the analytic methods work and how to effectively analyze and interpret epidemiologic and medical survival data with the help of modern computer systems. The introduction presents a review of a variety of statistical methods that are not only key elements of survival analysis but are also central to statistical analysis in general. Techniques such as statistical tests, transformations, confidence intervals, and analytic modeling are presented in the context of survival data but are, in fact, statistical tools that apply to understanding the analysis of many kinds of data. Similarly, discussions of such statistical concepts as bias, confounding, independence, and interaction are presented in the context of survival analysis and also are basic components of a broad range of applications. These topics make up essentially a 'second-year', one-semester biostatistics course in survival analysis concepts and techniques for non-statisticians.

Since the identification of the first cases of the coronavirus in December 2019, there has been a significant amount of confusion regarding the origin and spread of the so-called 'coronavirus', SARS-CoV-2, and the cause of the disease COVID-19. Conflicting messages from the media and officials across different countries and organizations, the abundance of disparate sources of information, unfounded conspiracy theories on the origins of the virus, unproven therapies, and inconsistent public health measures, have all served to increase anxiety in the population. Where did the virus come from? How is it transmitted? How does it cause disease? Is it like flu? What is a pandemic? In this concise and accessible introduction, a leading expert provides answers to these commonly asked questions. This revised and updated edition now also covers how the virus mutates, how important these mutations are, how vaccines work, and what we can expect in the near and long-term future.

This book explores the pressing issues of border control and infectious disease from the nineteenth to present day. The book places world health in world history, microbes and their management in globalization, and disease in the history of international relations, bringing together leading scholars on the history and politics of global health.

Air, the Environment and Public Health traces the theme of air and health from ancient civilisations onwards. The author explores the changing conceptions of air and health alongside historical developments in public health, and critically examines contemporary problems - conceptual, scientific, philosophical and ethical - in public health theory and practice. The first part surveys air and health in early civilisations, as well as the nineteenth-century debates around miasma and evolution. The second part explores the history of smoke pollution and health. Part three examines philosophical issues around modern air pollution epidemiology, and part four looks at climate change and ethical frameworks in public health. The book is a unique blend of public health science, history of medicine, ethics and philosophy. It will be of interest to those working or studying in public health, environmental health, medicine, history of medicine, environmental philosophy, and medical ethics.

Control of waterborne disease is a multi-disciplinary function relying on co-operation between engineers, public health professionals, toxicologists, environmental health officials and other professionals. With this in mind, Waterborne Disease: Ecology and Epidemiology provides a comprehensive overview of waterborne-related health problems for all such professionals with an interest in this significant world-wide problem. Each chapter follows a logical structure, focusing upon a specific disease group and presenting a detailed and authoritative examination of a given pathogen's microbiology, clinical aspects and diagnosis. Chapters also review the distribution of each pathogen in the aquatic environment and discuss outbreaks and sporadic disease from microbiological, epidemiological and water supply perspectives. With increasing awareness of environmental problems throughout the world, this unique volume provides timely and invaluable reading for medical practitioners, environmental health officers, public health professionals, water quality engineers, scientists and environmental regulators.

The success of the Apgar score demonstrates the astounding power of an appropriate clinical instrument. This down-to-earth book provides practical advice, underpinned by theoretical principles, on developing and evaluating measurement instruments in all fields of medicine. It equips you to choose the most appropriate instrument for specific purposes. The book covers measurement theories, methods and criteria for evaluating and selecting instruments. It provides methods to assess measurement properties, such as reliability, validity and responsiveness, and interpret the results. Worked examples and end-of-chapter assignments use real data and well-known instruments to build your skills at implementation and interpretation through hands-on analysis of real-life cases. All data and solutions are available online. This is a perfect course book for students and a perfect companion for professionals/researchers in the medical and health sciences who care about the quality and meaning of the measurements they perform.

Biostatistics Decoded covered a large number of statistical methods that are mainly applied to clinical and epidemiological research, as well as a comprehensive discussion of study designs for observational research and clinical trials, two important concerns for the clinical researcher. In this second edition, new material is included covering statistical methods and study designs that are used to analyse research. Following the same methodology used in the first edition, the chapters are presented in two levels of detail, one for the reader who wishes only to understand the rationale behind each statistical method, and one for the reader who wishes to understand the computations Key features include: Extensive coverage of the design and analysis of experiments for basic science research Experimental designs are presented together with the statistical methods The rationale of all forms of ANOVA is explained with simple mathematics A comprehensive presentation of statistical tests for multiple comparisons Calculations for all statistical methods are illustrated with examples and explained step-by-step. This book presents biostatistical concepts and methods in a way that is accessible to anyone, regardless of his or her knowledge of mathematics. The topics selected for this book cover will meet the needs of clinical professionals to readers in basic science research.

Since the publication of the second edition, many new Bayesian tools and methods have been developed for space-time data analysis, the predictive modeling of health outcomes, and other spatial biostatistical areas. Exploring these new developments, Bayesian Disease Mapping: Hierarchical Modeling in Spatial Epidemiology, Third Edition provides an up-to-date, cohesive account of the full range of Bayesian disease mapping methods and applications. In addition to the new material, the book also covers more conventional areas such as relative risk estimation, clustering, spatial survival analysis, and longitudinal analysis. After an introduction to Bayesian inference, computation, and model assessment, the text focuses on important themes, including disease map reconstruction, cluster detection, regression and ecological analysis, putative hazard modeling, analysis of multiple scales and multiple diseases, spatial survival and longitudinal studies, spatiotemporal methods, and map surveillance. It shows how Bayesian disease mapping can yield significant insights into georeferenced health data. The target audience for this text is public health specialists, epidemiologists, and biostatisticians who need to work with geo-referenced health data.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of "Total Exposure Health" and presents details on subject areas which make up the framework. It provides in-depth coverage of the science and technology supporting exposure and risk assessment. This includes advances in toxicology and the "-omics" as well as new techniques for exposure assessment. The book concludes with a discussion on bioethics implications, including ethical considerations related to genetic testing. Discusses advances in exposure monitoring Presents a systems biology approach to human exposures Examines how overall well-being translates to worker productivity Considers the link between work-related risk factors and health conditions Covers the study of genomics in precision medicine and exposure science Explores bioethics in genomic studies Aimed at the exposure professionals (industrial hygienists, toxicologists, public health, environmental engineers), geneticists, molecular biologists, engineers and managers in the health and safety industry as well as professionals in the public administration field.

Methods, just as diseases or scientists, have their own history. It is important for scientists to be aware of the genesis of the methods they use and of the context in which they were developed.

A History of Epidemiologic Methods and Concepts is based on a collection of contributions which appeared in "SPM International Journal of Public Health," starting in January 2001. The contributions focus on the historical emergence of current epidemiological methods and their relative importance at different points in time, rather than on specific achievements of epidemiology in controlling plagues such as cholera, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid fever, or lung cancer. The papers present the design of prospective and retrospective studies, and the concepts of bias, confounding, and interaction. The compilation of articles is complemented by an introduction and comments by Prof. Alfredo Morabia which puts them in the context of current epidemiological research.

Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Control Edited by Norman Noah King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, UK, and Mary O'Mahony Public Health Laboratory Service, London, UK With the growing interest in communicable diseases and their control worldwide, largely due to new and re-emerging infections, there is a need for up-to-date information in this continually changing field. Timely and wide ranging, Communicable Disease: Epidemiology and Control addresses many of the contemporary issues and provides:
* Detailed and concise examination of management issues, such as commissioning and contracting, setting up an incident room, and legal aspects
* A practical approach
* An examination of a wide spectrum of issues in communicable diseases, including cholera, tuberculosis, Helicobacter pylori, and sexually transmitted diseases
This volume is an invaluable resource for microbiologists, epidemiologists and all professionals involved in public health.

1918-1919 saw the end of the Great War and the eruption of the largest epidemic in history, a pandemic of flu. Influenza struck half the world's population, killing 50-100 million people in less than a year. This work is the first examination of Britain's experience of the pandemic. But this is not only history, as well as telling the story of the "Spanish" influenza the book looks forward and considers the possibilities of future pandemics, including the dangers of bird flu. A "total" history, this book ranges from the spread of the 1918-1919 pandemic, to the basic biology of influenza, and how epidemics and pandemics are possible, to consider the demographic, social, economic and political impacts of such a massive pandemic, including the cultural dimensions of naming, blame, metaphors, memory, the media, art and literature. In many countries the pandemic precipitated the creation and expansion of public healthcare as nothing else ever could. Despite this, in subsequent times, the role and impact of the pandemic has been overlooked, an oversight this work redresses. The British story of the pandemic has never been told. Britain and the "1918-19 Influenza Pandemic" tells that story but also places it in its fuller context with extensive material from around the world. The book provides the most recent tally of the pandemic's impact, including the vast mortality, as well as questioning the apparent origins of the pandemic. An inter-disciplinary study, it stretches from history and geography through to medicine in order to convey the full magnitude of the first global medical "disaster" of the twentieth century.

Findings from the field of evolutionary biology are yielding dramatic insights for health scientists, especially those involved in the fight against infectious diseases. This book is the first in-depth presentation of these insights. In detailing why the pathogens that cause malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis, and AIDS have their special kinds of deadliness, the book shows how efforts to control virtually all diseases would benefit from a more thorough application of evolutionary principles. When viewed from a Darwinian perspective, a pathogen is not simply a disease-causing agent, it is a self-replicating organism driven by evolutionary pressures to pass on as many copies of itself as possible. In this context, so-called "cultural vectors"--those aspects of human behavior and the human environment that allow spread of disease from immobilized people--become more important than ever. Interventions to control diseases don't simply hinder their spread but can cause pathogens and the diseases they engender to evolve into more benign forms. In fact, the union of health science with evolutionary biology offers an entirely new dimension to policy making, as the possibility of determining the future course of many diseases becomes a reality. By presenting the first detailed explanation of an evolutionary perspective on infectious disease, the author has achieved a genuine milestone in the synthesis of health science, epidemiology, and evolutionary biology. Written in a clear, accessible style, it is intended for a wide readership among professionals in these fields and general readers interested in science and health.

Vector-borne diseases have increasingly emerged as significant causes of human illnesses worldwide, largely due to environmental changes (deforestation), population movements (migration and travelling), international trades, and buildup of drug resistance. These are presenting major challenge to the efficacy and use of conventional tools for controlling vector-borne diseases. Therefore, use of microbial approach for the control of vector-borne diseases is gaining importance. This book comprehensively reviews vector-borne diseases and their microbial control, emphasizing majorly on ecofriendly ways of microbial control.

This new edition of Health Studies provides an authoritative and contemporary introduction to the study of health. With chapters including epidemiology, psychology, human and environmental geography, and anthropology, it is the only book to explore in one volume all of the core disciplines that contribute to understanding health. It illustrates how the complexity of health problems such as obesity should be viewed with an interdisciplinary perspective. Each chapter explains the disciplinary approach and then its theoretical and research approaches with examples. A highlight of this 4th edition is a new chapter on sports and exercise science providing another scientific chapter on physiology which is applied and will be of interest to all those thinking of employment in sports or leisure industry. The book is accessible and learner-centered and each chapter features: a connections feature that links the chapters together; learning tasks; questions for reflection and debate; examples to illustrate concepts, methodologies and to explore contemporary issues; a case study on obesity, food and diet. Comprehensive, accessible and written by leading experts in the different fields, this is the introductory text for all students of health studies.

It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others - rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just. For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body. In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West. The cure was never available to black and brown nations. And the tuberculosis bacillus showed a remarkable ability to adapt - so that at the very moment it could have been extinguished as a threat to humanity, it found a way back, aided by authoritarian government, toxic kindness of philanthropists, science denialism and medical apartheid. Krishnan's original reporting paints a granular portrait of the post-antibiotic era as a new, aggressive, drug resistant strain of TB takes over. Phantom Plague is an urgent, riveting and fascinating narrative that deftly exposes the weakest links in our battle against this ancient foe.

This book provides practical guidance for statisticians, clinicians, and researchers involved in clinical trials in the biopharmaceutical industry, medical and public health organisations. Academics and students needing an introduction to handling missing data will also find this book invaluable. The authors describe how missing data can affect the outcome and credibility of a clinical trial, show by examples how a clinical team can work to prevent missing data, and present the reader with approaches to address missing data effectively. The book is illustrated throughout with realistic case studies and worked examples, and presents clear and concise guidelines to enable good planning for missing data. The authors show how to handle missing data in a way that is transparent and easy to understand for clinicians, regulators and patients. New developments are presented to improve the choice and implementation of primary and sensitivity analyses for missing data. Many SAS code examples are included the reader is given a toolbox for implementing analyses under a variety of assumptions.

As screening programs for HIV, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, genetic abnormalities and other risk factors continue to proliferate, difficult questions are continually raised concerning the psychological and behavioral effects on the participants. Although members of the public health community have debated the costs and benefits of screening programs for over three decades, these questions have become especially pertinent with the current emphasis on early disease detection and prevention. While advocates argue that risk notification provides the impetus for individuals to improve their health habits and seek early treatment, skeptics contend that risk screening can have an adverse labeling effect, leading to increased anxiety, work absenteeism, and fatalism.
Now, for the first time, the widely scattered body of research on the effects of risk factor screening is comprehensively reviewed and evaluated in this volume. Here, an internationally recognized group of expert contributors summarizes and discusses current knowledge about the psychosocial consequences of risk factor testing, taking into account individual differences, gender differences, risk status, and intervention strategies. Both the public health and behavioral science viewpoints are explored through up-to-date reviews and stimulating commentary. Bridging the gap between data, theory and public health policy, this volume is essential reading for researchers, professionals and policymakers concerned with the prevention of acute and chronic disease.

Clinical Data Quality Checks for CDISC Compliance using SAS is the first book focused on identifying and correcting data quality and CDISC compliance issues with real-world innovative SAS programming techniques such as Proc SQL, metadata and macro programming. Learn to master Proc SQL's subqueries and summary functions for multi-tasking process. Drawing on his more than 25 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry, the author provides a unique approach that empowers SAS programmers to take control of data quality and CDISC compliance. This book helps you create a system of SDTM and ADaM checks that can be tracked for continuous improvement. How often have you encountered issues such as missing required variables, duplicate records, invalid derived variables and invalid sequence of two dates? With the SAS programming techniques introduced in this book, you can start to monitor these and more complex data and CDISC compliance issues. With increased standardization in SDTM and ADaM specifications and data values, codelist dictionaries can be created for better organization, planning and maintenance. This book includes a SAS program to create excel files containing unique values from all SDTM and ADaM variables as columns. In addition, another SAS program compares SDTM and ADaM codelist dictionaries with codelists from define.xml specifications. Having tools to automate this process greatly saves time from doing it manually. Features SDTMs and ADaMs Vitals SDTMs and ADaMs Data CDISC Specifications Compliance CDISC Data Compliance Protocol Compliance Codelist Dictionary Compliance

Biostatistics for Clinical and Public Health Research provides a concise overview of statistical analysis methods. Use of SAS and Stata statistical software is illustrated in full, including how to interpret results. Focusing on statistical models without all the theory, the book is complete with exercises, case studies, take-away points, and data sets. Readers will be able to maximize their statistical abilities in hypothesis testing, data interpretation, and application while also learning when and how to consult a biostatistician. This book will be an invaluable tool for students and clinical and public health practitioners.

This Companion provides a comprehensive account of health and medical geography and approaches the major themes and key topics from a variety of angles. Offers a unique breadth of topics relating to both health and medical geography Includes contributions from a range of scholars from rising stars to established, internationally renowned authors Provides an up-to-date review of the state of the sub-discipline Thematically organized sections offer detailed accounts of specific issues and combine general overviews of the current literature with case study material Chapters cover topics at the cutting edge of the sub-discipline, including emerging and re-emerging diseases, the politics of disease, mental and emotional health, landscapes of despair, and the geography of care

This book contains the contributions to the 32nd Hemophilia Symposium, Hamburg 2001. The main topics are epidemiology, hemophilia, pediatric hemostasiology. The volume is rounded off by numerous free papers and posters on hemophilia, hemorrhagic diathesis, thrombophilic diathesis and associated topics.

Although classical electromagnetic (EM) field theory is typically embedded in vector calculus and differential equations, many of the basic concepts and characteristics can be understood with precursory mathematical knowledge. Completely revised and updated, Basic Introduction to Bioelectromagnetics, Second Edition facilitates the process of interdisciplinary research by introducing life scientists to the basic concepts of EM fields. This new edition outlines elements of EM that are helpful to life scientists working with physicists and electrical engineers. Each concept is presented with an associated application and discussion. Example applications include hyperthermia, neural stimulation, MRI, NMR, ultrasound, and cardiac pacing/defibrillation. With the liberal use of diagrams and graphs, this qualitative and illustrative point of access: Covers the entire frequency spectrum from direct current (DC) up through optical frequencies Includes more than 200 illustrations with 40 medical applications Incorporates examples from real applications to explain concepts Concentrates on the qualitative explanation of the key concepts, fundamental principles, and characteristic behaviors of EM fields, without mathematical rigor Offers practical rules of thumb to understand real situations Requires only an algebra background, in contrast to typical EM books that require vector calculus and partial differential equations Offering a simplified view of a very complex subject, this second edition provides an accessible introduction for life scientists and medical technologists on how EM fields work, what controls them, and the factors important to experimental setups.

This book analyzes the development of medical big data projects in Japan.Japan is experiencing unprecedented population aging, and labor productivity has decreased accordingly. Big data analysis of the Japanese medical real-world database (RWD) has the potential to tackle this issue.To allow readers to gain an understanding of Japanese medical big data analysis, the book discusses the original Japanese system that generates medical RWDs in the hospital medical records system, the nationwide standardized health checkup system, and the public medical insurance system in Japan.After introducing four major big data projects in the healthcare-medical field in Japan, the book explains the importance of creating information standards to maintain data quality and to analyze medical big data. It enables readers to analyze which standards are installed in which RWDs, how the standards are maintained, and which issues are prevalent in Japan.This book also describes the ethical processes involved in big data projects involving medical RWDs in Japan.