This course is designed to provide sufficient understanding of the statistics commonly used in medicine to enable clinicians and those interested in clinical research to read and interpret the medical literature critically, to identify appropriate statistics for basic research designs used in medicine, and to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate statistical applications of common research designs.

This course will introduce the principals and practice of clinical epidemiology and the epidemiologic or population-based approach to health science and disease. The course will examine the role of clinical epidemiology in prevention, in clinical practice and clinical and public policy, the changing patterns of community health problems, including the changing nature of and risk factors for infectious disease and chronic diseases.

This course will present the history, organization and planning, rationale for, methods, (design, sampling, analysis, bias and error), limits, ethics and practical issues involved in the conduct of clinical trials. The course will draw on examples from the clinical literature to illustrate each topic. The impact of clinical trials on the practices of medicine, national policy and public opinion will be discussed.

Students will develop knowledge: (1) of major frameworks of ethics and the basic ethical conceptions operative in public health research ; (2) familiarity with some of the most ethical issues facing those engaged in public health research (health promotion, disease prevention, and epidemiological and biostatistical research); (3) the ability to identify, articulate and analyze ethical issues arising from public health, and to formulate critical and well-reasoned ethical arguments; (4) competence to participate in ethical decision making as issues arise in public health research practice and policy. This course will also provide students with the historical background, current regulations and IRB requirements related to human subject's protection issues.