What is an Epidemiologist?
An Epidemiologist will attempt to: • Improve knowledge of the causes, natural history and outcome of disease in the community and in Mayo Clinic’s practice. • Help to define population needs as well as efficacious and cost-effective approaches to delivering specific procedures and technologies. What Services do the CTSA Service Center Epidemiologist Provide?
An epidemiologist is a person who studies patterns of diseases or health risks in population groups, societies, and cultures. The epidemiologist may look at how diseases affect certain populations, the emergence of viruses in geographical locations, or they may track certain diseases. The goal of the epidemiologist is to reduce public health risks by studying the pattern of disease or several diseases, as well as other health risks like injury from car crashes or other accidents. Many epidemiologists can then make predictions about likelihood of disease occurrence, and develop prevention strategies. The epidemiologist usually has a bachelor’s degree in one of the sciences and a graduate degree (Master’s or PhD) in epidemiology. Important studies at the graduate level include learning about chronic and infectious diseases, studying psychology, physiology, biochemistry, genetics, environmental impacts on humans, toxicology, biostatistics, and health service administration. Having not onl
Epidemiology is part of the field of public health and preventive medicine. An epidemiologist studies the health of populations to discover what factors lead to disease. Epidemiology is considered the basic science behind all public health practices. The research done by epidemiologists allows other health care professionals to offer advice on how to prevent disease. Epidemiologists perform closely monitored studies to determine the factors that affect health and cause disease. They monitor the overall health of populations and look for patterns of disease. In addition, many epidemiologists perform outbreak investigations to determine the initial source of an epidemic. Other epidemiologists examine lifestyle factors and their relation to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Epidemiology is often broken down into the categories of infectious disease and chronic disease. There are also sub-specialties such as injury prevention, aging, women’s health, reproductive
Epidemiologists perform research, education, and public health practice in universities, government agencies, international organizations, and private corporations. Epidemiologists often work on developing or refining methods of measuring and evaluating disease occurrences; develop and recommend public health policy; and study or research chronic diseases, infectious diseases, disease outbreaks, injuries, occupations, and environments, among other functions. Epidemiology espouses many different specializations, such as, the study of infectious and chronic diseases, environmental and occupational determinants of diseases, and genetics determinants of diseases. The biggest satisfaction for an epidemiologist is discovering some relationship between an avoidable exposure and a disease that leads to action that improves public health. For example, some birth defects have been associated to deficiency folic acid in the diet. Consequently, prevention strategies have been implemented, such as
1 Do you like to solve mysteries? Would you feel satisfied by solving disease mysteries? Have you ever thought that there might be such a thing? Well, there is. An epidemiologist is a disease detective. 2 First and foremost, epidemiologists are scientists. In general, they study lots of diseases and patterns of diseases. They become especially involved in epidemics, or unusual disease outbreaks. Through their studies, they try to figure out what causes disease, what risk factors to diseases are, and how to prevent or control disease. 3 Epidemiologists need to be intelligent. They need to study lots of science and math. Most need doctoral degrees and some are actually medical doctors with master’s degrees in epidemiology.
