• Question: What is an Epidemiologist??

    Asked by irishpants to Jo on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by field1, ladiesoflollipopxxx, alisonkatie.
    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hello.

      Like I said on my profile, epidemiology is a way of using real life data, from real people (usually living their normal lives) to work out what diseases they get and why they get them – and then to work out what we can do about it.

      Soooo – an epidemiologist is someone who analyses the real life data about diseases (using special statistics techniques). There are LOADS of different types of epidemiologists – some work on infectious diseases like flu or malaria, and some work on chronic diseases like diabetes or cancer. The people who analyse the results from clinical trials testing whether medicines work are also epidemiologists too.

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