Epidemiologists – The Disease Detectives
If you’ve heard of the Flu Epidemic, you’re looking at the diseases that epidemiologists study. The study of infectious diseases is the focus of the medical specialty of epidemiology. A vital part of epidemiology is analyzing groups of people who have been exposed to something in the environment to see if they have been impacted by this exposure. The work of epidemiologists is also crucial to pandemics, like COVID-19.
There is a difference between doctors and epidemiologists. A doctor concentrates on the health of an individual, but an epidemiologist focuses on the health of a group of people. This is the major distinction between a doctor and an epidemiologist. Pandemics and epidemics are both studied in epidemiology. Epidemics typically impact a large number of individuals all in a similar location. A pandemic is when a disease affects a large population across several different countries or continents.
Epidemiologists conduct a great deal of laboratory research and data collection. They want to figure out how to stop the outbreak. They monitor drugs like vaccines and research their efficiency. When looking at a new outbreak, they are concerned about two main things: frequency and pattern.
Frequency is the relationship between a population’s size and the number of health events, such as the quantity of cases of meningitis or diabetes, that occur in a community. Epidemiologists can compare disease occurrence in various populations using this rate.
Pattern is the frequency of health-related occurrences by person, place, and time. Time patterns might be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or any other division of time that may affect the likelihood of contracting an illness. Geographic variance and the location of workplaces or schools are only a few examples of place patterns. Personal characteristics include demographics like age, gender, marital status, and financial level that may be linked to risk of disease, injury, or disability, as well as behaviors and environmental exposures.
In the end, we need epidemiologists to make sense of the world around us. They make predictions about diseases and come up with effective ways to prevent them. They continue to be crucial to the de-escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you enjoy figuring out mysteries, maybe this “disease detective” career is right for you!
Source:
“Principles of Epidemiology.” 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18 May 2012.
“What Is Epidemiology?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 June 2016.
Scientific Peer Review by Alysia Mandato
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