Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Evaluations Of The Effectiveness Of A Web-Based Graduate Epidemiology Course, Molly A. Rose, Anthony J. Frisby, Michael D. Hamlin, Susan S. Jones

Anthony J Frisby, PhD

An online epidemiology course was developed, implemented, and evaluated for graduate nursing students through the collaborative efforts of nursing faculty and information, education, and instructional design staff of the library at a health sciences university. This epidemiology course is a core curriculum course for graduate nursing students. The course was piloted with 14 students (one student in Romania); the initial online offering ran concurrently with a traditional classroom section. Extensive evaluation data were collected and analyzed to compare the effectiveness of the classroom and distance-learning formats. Areas of evaluation included objective measures, such as midterm and final examination scores and …

Chinese Journals: A Guide For Epidemiologists, Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Chinese journals in epidemiology, preventive medicine and public health contain much that is of potential international interest. However, few non-Chinese speakers are acquainted with this literature. This article therefore provides an overview of the contemporary scene in Chinese biomedical journal publication, Chinese bibliographic databases and Chinese journals in epidemiology, preventive medicine and public health. The challenge of switching to English as the medium of publication, the development of publishing bibliometric data from Chinese databases, the prospect of an Open Access publication model in China, the issue of language bias in literature reviews and the quality of Chinese journals are discussed. …

Does Language Matter? A Case Study Of Epidemiological And Public Health Journals, Databases And Professional Education In French, German And Italian, Iacopo Baussano, Patrick Brzoska, Ugo Fedeli, Claudia Larouche, Oliver Razum, Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Epidemiology and public health are usually context-specific. Journals published in different languages and countries play a role both as sources of data and as channels through which evidence is incorporated into local public health practice. Databases in these languages facilitate access to relevant journals, and professional education in these languages facilitates the growth of native expertise in epidemiology and public health. However, as English has become the lingua franca of scientific communication in the era of globalisation, many journals published in non-English languages face the difficult dilemma of either switching to English and competing internationally, or sticking to the native …

Epidemiology Of Copd Exacerbations, Andrea K. Johnston, David M. Mannino

David M. Mannino

Chapter Opening

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is expected to be the third cause of death worldwide by the year 2020, behind only cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease (1), and the fifth leading cause of disability-adjusted life years lost (2). In the United States, COPD accounted for 8 million outpatient visits, 1.5 millions emergency department (ED) visits, 726,000 hospitalizations, and 119,000 deaths in 2000, with the number of women dying from COPD surpassing the number of men for the first time (3). In the United Kingdom, COPD exacerbations are now the most common cause of hospital admission (4). Acute exacerbations …

Capacity Building Of Biodefense Informatics For Public Health Preparedness And Response In Rural Regions: Epiinfo, Gis, And Data Management Training, Chiehwen Ed Hsu, Francisco Soto Mas

Francisco Soto Mas

Emergency informatics such as data management and geographic information systems applications have become an important training agenda for enhancing health surveillance and risk communication in public health emergencies. The free EpiInfo/Epimap software developed by the CDC offering domain knowledge such as health information management may be particularly useful for preparing nonurban jurisdictions often confronting limited resources in dealing with health emergency events. This article describes the delivery of training workshops to enhance the competencies of health workers in biodefense informatics and discusses its implication for delivering education to rural regions.