epidemiologic

Epidemiologic is an adjective used to describe things related to epidemiology, the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in populations, and the application of this knowledge to disease prevention and health promotion. Epidemiologic work seeks to describe who is affected, where and when, and to identify factors that influence risk. It encompasses a range of methods and disciplines, including statistics, biology, social sciences, and environmental science.

Epidemiologic research typically divides into descriptive and analytic components. Descriptive epidemiology summarizes patterns of disease by person, place, and time. Analytic epidemiology evaluates hypotheses about associations between exposures and outcomes, using study designs such as cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies, as well as randomized trials in some contexts. Key measures include incidence, prevalence, risk, and rate, and measures of association such as relative risk and odds ratio. Issues such as bias, confounding, and effect modification must be considered to draw valid inferences about causality, which is often guided by criteria such as temporality, plausibility, and consistency.

Applications of epidemiologic information include surveillance of disease incidence, outbreak investigation, identification of risk factors, evaluation of interventions and public health policies, and forecasting or modeling of disease spread. The term epidemiologic may appear in descriptions of methods, results, or evidence in medical literature, public health reports, and health technology assessments.