Health and Disease in Populations

The unit aims to enable students to make progress towards meeting some of the learning outcomes described in Tomorrow’s Doctors (2018) relevant to ‘The Doctor as Scholar and Scientist’, ‘The Doctor as a Practitioner’ and ‘The Doctor as a Professional’. The specific aims are for students to demonstrate how to interpret population-based studies of disease frequencies, risk factor associations and treatment effectiveness, to enable the practice of evidence-based medicine for the benefit of the health of patients and the population. In this unit, we aim to:

• Give students an introduction to the scientific basis of epidemiology.
• Enable students to understand the implications of epidemiological and health service data for their future practice.
• Facilitate students in the development of their practice of medicine, not only in terms of benefit for individual patients but for the population as a whole.
• Equip students with the skills to critically appraise the evidence for and against potential risk factors causing a disease or clinical interventions they may consider using.