Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Descriptive Epidemiology
Descriptive epidemiology establishes the factors and issues behind the existence of a certain health condition, health events or health phenomenon. By adopting the basis of a place, descriptive epidemiology explores the prevalence based on the population in all its characteristics such as age, race, country or special groups (Friis & Sellers, 2014). This way, descriptive epidemiology contributes to the identification of the extent of a public health problem. Moreover, such descriptive epidemiology enhances the understanding of the depth of a healthy situation after identifying the public health problem.
Through the use of descriptive epidemiology, the investigation of a health situation provides important data on the disease of a health situation. According to (Friis & Sellers, 2014), the data explored provides a basis of describing the health problem in a language that is understood and risky cases analyzed. This enhances the communication of the situation. For instance, the description of the data on the prevalence of a disease can be based on the place, the population affected and the people affected. Such data will help in the understanding of the risky people, risky places and the communication of the situation to people.
Descriptive epidemiology provides the changes in the prevalence of a health problem, such as an increase or decrease in the prevalence rate. This helps to evaluate the effectiveness of a public health program; which is measured by the reduction of the prevalence of the health problem being handled (Friis & Sellers, 2014). Moreover, descriptive epidemiology provides data on the historical prevalence of a health problem. This provision helps in the investigation of clues of the possible causes of the disease. More importantly, descriptive epidemiology allows investigation of the prevalence and examination based by place, by person and time. This makes descriptive epidemiology an important step of the investigation of a health problem.
Reference
Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2014). Epidemiology for Public Health Practice. Sudbury, MA:
Jones & Bartlett Publishers