Introduction
Public health as a field comprises the convictions, science, and skills relating to the preservation and improvement of the health of the general public through preventative endeavors instead of curative ones. One of the basic sciences that are critical to promoting public health is epidemiology. As a tool, epidemiology is useful in the protection and promotion of public health through the application of common sense as well as scientific reasoning (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2015). One of the main areas of epidemiology is descriptive epidemiology. Descriptive epidemiology focuses on the description of diseases and their determinants. It is useful in the organization and analysis of various diseases and the occurrences of those diseases in the given geographical area over time. Descriptive epidemiology is therefore capable of generating etiological research hypotheses (Liu, 2018). This paper discusses the role of descriptive epidemiology in nursing today.
Descriptive Epidemiology
Descriptive epidemiology refers to a method of data organization and analysis with the goal of understanding the differences that exist in the frequency of occurrence of diseases in a given geographical area over time. It also looks at how health differs among people based on factors such as place, time, and person. It is useful in the identification of trends in health and diseases and helps stakeholders organize resources effectively to fight diseases. Also, it is very useful in the formulation of hypotheses on various health-related topics (Richards & Cai, 2016). Such hypotheses are useful in the testing of various theories and to draw associations between various health outcomes and disease determinants.
In science today, epidemiology plays several roles including the identification of emerging health issues, monitoring of the health of populations, reporting on the health status of populations, helping stakeholders prioritize health issues, and the evaluation of possible associations between risk factors and health outcomes. These associations can alert stakeholders about serious threats such as bioterrorism and help measure how efficient the intervention strategies employed are.
Time, person, and place are important concepts in epidemiology. Data is usually compiled and analyzed based on these three factors. This is especially true in nursing (Katzmarzyk et al., 2017). Further, accounts created about the health of a population are also expressed using tables, graphs, and maps.
Time
With the change of seasons or the passage of time, there are usually significant changes in the occurrence of a disease in a given population. The changes due to the passage of time can be both predictable and unpredictable. Also, some diseases may occur randomly at any time as is the case with salmonellosis (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2015). For seasonal diseases, health stakeholders can make accurate predictions of their occurrence and therefore put in control or preventative measures.
Place
Geographical location can be used to describe a disease’s occurrence. Such details help show the disparities that exist on the occurrence of the disease geographically. When place is used as characterization, the disease’s place of residence is taken into account. Other relevant geographical data is also recorded. The location...…a parallel to the exposure the control is put through (Colditz, Nguyen & Dart, 2016). To ensure that the arising differences are not because of confounding factors such as age and gender, matching is normally done by having controls that reflect these factors.
Cohort Study
This involves drawing a group of subjects from a given population and recording their exposure level at the start of the exercise and then following the group for the duration of the study to identify any health changes (Katzmarzyk et al., 2017). The researcher normally considers different exposures and outcomes and they are measured by self-questionnaire, observation, or from linkages to already existing data.
Conclusion
Epidemiology is a foundational science in public health. It helps in the assessment of the impact of the efforts of public health stakeholders and also outlines the nature of various conditions in given populations. It is an ever-evolving field and new strategies and methods that yield better results for public health efforts are developed year over year.
Descriptive epidemiology categorizes the appearance and occurrence of diseases based on variables such as person, place, and time. It is useful in the development of hypotheses that are widely used in analytical epidemiology. It is also useful in identifying the health concerns that should be given utmost priority when interventions are being devised. There are many kinds of descriptive epidemiology including case reports, case series, and cross-section. The application of descriptive epidemiology is a necessity when devising methods to protect against threats to populations.…
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