Question

Discuss how epidemiology is important to public health with Apa citation

Answer 1

• Epidemiology is the study of disease in populations. Veterinarians and others involved in the preventive medicine and public health professions use epidemiological methods for disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, and observational studies to identify risk factors of zoonotic disease in both human and animal populations(Bartlett,1997).
• Knowledge of these risk factors is used to direct further research investigation and to implement disease control measures. The use of hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) systems depends greatly on information produced by epidemiological studies. Epidemiological methods are used for disease surveillance to identify which hazards are the most important(Bartlett,1997).
• Epidemiology identifies the distribution of diseases, factors underlying their source and cause, and methods for their control; this requires an understanding of how political, social and scientific factors intersect to exacerbate disease risk, which makes epidemiology a unique science. Nevertheless, its definition as a science is debated; among the criticisms of the field are that epidemiology is an inexact science that it is simply a set of tools used by other disciplines, and that its dependence on observational data makes it a form of journalism rather than a science(Perkins, 2015)
• Socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, and features of the built environment, are known to affect health outcomes, including in individuals with cardiovascular and genetic diseases, and so they cannot be overlooked in studies of human health. Furthermore,there are tangible results from epidemiological research.
• The exact number of people whose lives have been saved by epidemiological research may not be possible to calculate, its importance in enhancing life quality and longevity cannot be overlooked.
• Increasingly, epidemiology is the key to understanding the impact of climate change on disease burden through the effect of temperature, humidity and seasonality on infectious disease dynamics, and the expansion of the ranges of disease vectors. Like  the State of Texas has reported transmission or outbreaks of Ebola, chikungunya, West Nile, and Zika virus infections within the past 5 years, and this is believed to be attributed to both climate change and rapid population expansion and urbanisation(Allen,2017).
• So, epidemiology is important and yes it is a science.If anything, epidemiology is a highly complex science because it needs to consider multiple variables associated with human diseases, such as pathogens, human social or travel dynamics, and the climate. This can mean that the results obtained for a disease and/or outbreak may not always be replicable for the same disease in a different environment