heilsufarsfræði

Heilsufarsfræði is a field within public health that focuses on understanding the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in populations, and on applying this understanding to prevent disease and promote health. The term can be translated as epidemiology or health science, depending on context, and it encompasses descriptive and analytical approaches to health data. Its roots lie in early public health practice, including cholera investigations by John Snow, and it has evolved with advances in statistics, data collection, and computational methods.

Methodologically, heilsufarsfræði uses surveillance systems, observational studies (cross-sectional, cohort, case–control), and experimental designs where appropriate. It relies on biostatistics to estimate measures of disease frequency—such as incidence, prevalence, and mortality—and to assess associations via risk ratios and odds ratios. Advanced topics include causal inference, modeling, and quantitative risk assessment.

Applications include informing public health policy, planning and evaluating screening and vaccination programs, and monitoring health inequalities. Subfields cover descriptive epidemiology, analytical epidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology, chronic disease epidemiology, occupational and environmental epidemiology, and social epidemiology. Data sources include vital records, health registries, surveys, and electronic health records. Ethical considerations focus on privacy, consent, data protection, and equitable use of findings to avoid stigmatization.