Swine flu, West Nile virus, cholera, tuberculosis. All of these are epidemics. Epidemiology is the study of population health. Although we typically think of only infectious diseases as epidemics, there are also social epidemics such as childhood obesity, cyber-bullying, addiction, and many others that impact all communities.
Students are empowered to investigate social and health problems they find personally significant by using epidemiology as a vehicle to guide student independent research and design.
The TEKS for Problem and Solutions and Science Research and Design both focus on student independent research.
Workshops in this course prepare teachers to facilitate either Problems and Solutions or Science Research and Design.
Teachers will be able to lead students to:
- Define a problem to research
- Conduct a literature review of peer reviewed scientific journals
- Develop an investigation using a survey
- Analyze data using odds ratio calculations
- Evaluate investigation evidences looking for sources of error and bias in the study
- Provide recommendations to the community based on their investigation
Expository reading and writing is a foundation of the course as student review case studies and communicate their own findings.
Teachers will be introduced to the foundations of Epidemiology and how it can be used to guide independent student research.
Topics will be taught through hands on activities that can be used with students. Topics include:
- Introduction of epidemiology through famous cases
- Ethical considerations of studying humans
-
Design and implementation of a case-control study which includes:
- Formulating study hypothesis
- Developing a survey for investigations
- Calculating odds ratios to determine exposure to risk factors
- Analyzing data for sources of error and bias
- TEKS alignment for both Science Research and Design and Problems and Solutions