Quote: "social epidemiology is 'that branch of epidemiology concerned with the way that social structures, institutions, and relationships influence health.'"
Concepts and methods used in the study of social factors in health and disease.
Introduction to Epidemiology: Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health and disease in populations, and how these patterns affect the health of individuals and populations.
Social Determinants of Health: These are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, that affect their health outcomes. This includes factors such as socioeconomic status, education, housing, and access to healthcare.
Health Disparities and Inequalities: Health disparities are differences in disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality, and other health outcomes that are linked to social disadvantage. Inequalities refer to systematic differences in health outcomes that are linked to unequal distribution of social, economic, and environmental resources.
Social and Behavioral Health: Social and behavioral health refer to the social and psychological factors that influence health behaviors, including stress, social support, and health beliefs. These factors can affect individuals' susceptibility to disease and their ability to cope with illness.
Environmental Health: Environmental Health refers to the effects of physical, chemical, and biological factors in the environment on human health. This includes exposure to pollutants, climate change, and other environmental risks.
Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Infectious disease epidemiology focuses on the distribution and determinants of infectious diseases, including their transmission, outbreak detection, prevention, and control.
Injury and Violence Prevention: Injury and violence epidemiology examines the patterns and causes of intentional and unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes, falls, and violence.
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention: Health promotion and disease prevention are strategies and interventions aimed at reducing the burden of disease and improve health outcomes. This includes interventions such as vaccination, health education, and health policy.
Global Health: Global health epidemiology focuses on the health of populations in low-income countries, and the challenges facing global health, including infectious diseases, environmental health, and health system strengthening.
Evaluation of Public Health Programs: Evaluation of public health programs is the process of assessing the effectiveness, impact, and efficiency of interventions aimed at improving population health. This includes design and implementation of evaluation studies, and the use of evaluation findings to inform policy and practice.
Infectious Disease Epidemiology: It deals with the spread and control of infectious diseases in communities.
Chronic Disease Epidemiology: It focuses on the identification and evaluation of factors that increase the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.
Behavioral Epidemiology: It examines how social, cultural, and economic factors influence individual behaviors such as drug use, smoking, and physical activity.
Environmental Epidemiology: It evaluates the impact of environmental factors like pollution and toxic chemicals on human health.
Occupational Epidemiology: It studies the relationship between work-related factors and the incidence of diseases or injuries.
Genetic Epidemiology: It investigates how genetic factors influence the occurrence of diseases in populations.
Pharmacoepidemiology: It examines the safety and effectiveness of medication use in populations.
Public Health Surveillance Epidemiology: It monitors and tracks the occurrence of disease in populations over time to identify patterns and trends.
Social Network Epidemiology: It studies the spread of diseases through social networks and the influence of social relationships on health outcomes.
Nutritional Epidemiology: It focuses on the relationship between nutrition and disease, including the role of diet in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.
Quote: "social epidemiology is 'that branch of epidemiology concerned with the way that social structures, institutions, and relationships influence health.'"
Quote: "This research includes 'both specific features of, and pathways by which, societal conditions affect health'."
Quote: "Social epidemiology can therefore address any health outcome, including chronic disease, infectious disease, mental health, and clinical outcomes or disease prognosis."
Quote: "Exposures of interest to social epidemiologists include individual-level measures (e.g., poverty, education, social isolation), contextual factors (e.g., residential segregation or income inequality), and social policies (e.g., policies creating income security or promoting educational access)."
Quote: "Understanding the origins of health disparities and identifying strategies to eliminate health disparities is a major focus of social epidemiology."
Quote: "Major research challenges in social epidemiology include tools to strengthen causal inference, methods to test theoretical frameworks such as Fundamental Cause Theory, translation of evidence to systems and policy changes that will improve population health, and mostly obscure causal mechanisms between exposures and outcomes."
Quote: "it has been proposed to integrate molecular pathological epidemiology into social epidemiology."
Quote: "Why have racial and economic inequalities in premature mortality persisted for generations even as the specific diseases causing premature death have completely changed?"
Quote: "Do changes in social policies regulating social safety nets, human capital development, employment, occupational conditions, housing, or residential segregation influence the health of individuals?"
Quote: "Do social conditions at specific periods of life, for example early life developmental periods, disproportionately influence later health outcomes compared to exposures at later ages?"
Quote: "Do adverse experiences such as chronic psychological stress, trauma, racism, or shame influence health and if so, what are the biological mechanisms of these effects?"
Quote: "Social epidemiology draws on methodologies and theoretical frameworks from many disciplines."
Quote: "intersecting social science fields often use health and disease in order to explain specifically social phenomenon (such as the growth of lay health advocacy movements), while social epidemiologists generally use social concepts in order to explain patterns of health in the population."
Quote: "Researchers Frank Pega and Ichiro Kawachi from Harvard University have suggested that this may lead to the new discipline of Political Epidemiology, which is more policy-applied in that it identifies effective and cost-effective social interventions for government action to improve health equity."