nursing health promotion/discussion/wk2

Epidemiology’s Role in Infectious and Communicable Diseases

As you discovered in this week’s lecture and readings, epidemiology studies various occurrences and health-related states or events that effect the general population. Epidemiologists examine the dispersion of health events in populations and use this knowledge to control and prevent future health problems.

Topic 1: Disease Outbreak

Select an infectious disease and research the CDC website for information about the disease, its natural history, presenting symptoms, and outbreak characteristics. Identify an occurrence of the disease by searching the Internet for recent reports of this disease and compare that episode or occurrence with information from the CDC website.

• How closely did that outbreak resemble the case definition?