What is the difference between the terms epidemiology and surveillance?
Epidemiology refers to the study of the occurrence, distribution and determining factors associated with the health and disease of a population – that is, the study of how often diseases or health events occur in different groups and why.Surveillance is a key component of epidemiology. It can be defined as the ongoing collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of health related data such as data about HIV infection. In simpler terms, surveillance is “counting” the who and where of disease and “looking” at the patterns of disease. Surveillance is one of a number of methods used by epidemiologists to gather information on a disease such as HIV infection.For example, an epidemiological study might examine behaviours that place people at risk of HIV infection (risk factors) or might investigate the people who display these risk behaviours.
Epidemiology refers to the study of the occurrence, distribution and determining factors associated with the health and disease of a population – that is, the study of how often diseases or health events occur in different groups and why. Surveillance is a key component of epidemiology. It can be defined as the ongoing collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of health related data such as data about HIV infection. In simpler terms, surveillance is “counting” the who and where of disease and “looking” at the patterns of disease. Surveillance is one of a number of methods used by epidemiologists to gather information on a disease such as HIV infection. For example, an epidemiological study might examine behaviours that place people at risk of HIV infection (risk factors) or might investigate the people who display these risk behaviours. If researchers first wanted to determine the group of people that accounts for the greatest number of positive HIV test reports, they woul
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