This book takes a 'no statistics' approach, and covers all the core principles needed for an epidemiology course including the basic epidemiological concepts, understanding and designing epidemiological studies, measuring cause-effect relationships, statistical analysis and bias, sampling methodology, interpreting diagnostic tests and the basic concepts of disease control and eradication.
Preface. Acknowledgements. 1 Introduction. Current and future challenges in animal health and veterinary public health. Veterinary epidemiology. 2 General epidemiological concepts. Introduction. Temporal and spatial patterns of disease. Determinants of health and disease. Causation. 3 Quantifying disease occurrence. Introduction. Incidence risk. Incidence rate. Prevalence. Comparison of prevalence and incidence measures. Miscellaneous measures of disease occurrence. Survival or time-to-event. Standardisation of occurrence measures. 4 Designing epidemiological studies. Introduction. Descriptive studies. Experimental studies. Observational studies. Comparison of study types. 5 Measuring effects. Introduction. Measures of strength of association. Measures of impact. Example calculation for epidemiological measures of effect. 6 Considering error and cause-effect. Introduction. Systematic error. Random error. Interaction or effect modification. From association to cause and effect. 7 Sampling of animal populations. Introduction. Probability or non-probability sampling. Random sampling strategies. Sample size calculation. 8 Interpreting diagnostic tests. Introduction. Diagnostic tests. Evaluating diagnostic tests. Test performance and interpretation at the individual animal level. Prevalence estimation and diagnostic tests. Clinical perspective on interpretation of diagnostic tests. Methods for choosing cut-off values. Likelihood ratios. Combining diagnostic test results. Decision analysis. 9 Informing disease control and eradication. Introduction. Risk analysis. Assessment of herd health and productivity. Disease surveillance and monitoring. Outbreak investigation. Modelling. Computerised information systems. References. Index.
Dirk Pfeiffer is Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College in London, UK. He has designed and taught international training courses in epidemiology all over the developed and developing world, from Australia to Vietnam. He currently provides scientific expertise to the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission, DEFRA, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization and various national governments. He has over 20 year's practical experience in the field and continues to work on some of the most high profile cases of global animal health.