Macroepidemiology
Bachelor's degree
In Maynard (USA)
Description
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Type
Bachelor's degree
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Location
Maynard (USA)
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Start date
Different dates available
This course presents a challenging multi-dimensional perspective on the causes of human disease and mortality. The course focuses on analyses of major causes of mortality in the US since 1900: cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes, and infectious diseases. Students create analytical models to derive estimates for historically variant population risk factors and physiological rate parameters, and conduct analyses of familial data to separately estimate inherited and environmental risks. The course evaluates the basic population genetics of dominant, recessive and non-deleterious inherited risk factors.
Facilities
Location
Start date
Start date
Reviews
Subjects
- IT risk
- Diabetes
- Perspective
- Risk
Course programme
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
In brief: this little course is called "macroepidemiology" for lack of a sufficiently comprehensive term for its contents. It is offered for those students who accept the responsibility of self-education. They may benefit from the experience of carefully analyzing what is known about a common disease in the company of other students with shared interests and an instructor for whom such analyses are a self-required responsibility. They will benefit from analyses of widely-held but contested assumptions about genetic and environmental risk factors.
Complete text of Instructor's Perspective (PDF)
In lieu of a textbook, the class will read approximately 30 manuscripts from a larger set of recommended readings.
Students will use compiled mortality data for two weekly assignments and the term paper. A Java®-based computer program, Cancer Fit, will be provided for this analysis.
Each student will choose a common disease such as a form of cancer, vascular disease or diabetes of interest to him or her, and produce a major analytical term paper with installments due every three weeks.
There are no quizzes or exams.
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Macroepidemiology