Epidemiology

Last update: 5 August 2008,
by Maureen Bell

Searching Medline

Remember that Medline has a Thesaurus of terms - MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in Medline. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve information where authors may use different terminology for the same concepts.

You will find material on epidemiology and epidemiologic methods in Medline, but you will need to be aware of the thesaurus (MeSH) terms used to search for the various topics. Below are some examples of the language Medline uses to describe the concepts in this field.

MeSH - Epidemiologic Factors

MeSH - Epidemiologic Methods

MeSH - Epidemiologic Research Design

MeSH - Epidemiology

MeSH - Health Surveys

MeSH - Morbidity

MeSH - Mortality

MeSH - Quality-Adjusted Life Years

Many topics in MeSH have hierarchies of more specific subcategories or related terms.The indentations in the lists reflect the structure of the hierarchy, and the + signs at the end of terms indicate that there is a further hierarchy of terms not displayed here. Any of these terms can be searched individually, or you can "explode" terms to search sections of the list.

There is another option for searching the epidemiology of specific diseases, or classes of disease. To search for articles on the epidemiology of specific disease you can simply add the subheading "epidemiology" to the term.

For a list of the abbreviations used for subheadings in PubMed click here

Try using the search structure below to find articles on the epidemiology of lung cancer in relation to smoking.

COMBINE

Lung Neoplasms/Epidemiology (MeSH Term)
Epidemiology of tumors or cancer of the lung.

AND

Smoking (MeSH term)
Inhaling and exhaling the smoke of tobacco or something similar to tobacco.

PubMed Search Formulation

lung neoplasms/ep[majr] AND smoking[majr] AND english[lang]

This search strategy uses the subheading epidemiology "ep" associated with lung cancer. The section in the square brackets includes majr - which focuses the search on articles where the subject is a major issue in the article. The search is then limited to articles which include smoking, also as a major subject, and which are in English, or which have English abstracts.

PubMed's default setting is to "explode" all terms, and so this search will include the subcategories of lung neoplasms listed below.

Lung Neoplasms
Carcinoma, Bronchogenic
Coin Lesion, Pulmonary
Pancoast's Syndrome
Pulmonary Blastoma

and the subcategory of Smoking - Marijuana Smoking.

Click here to see how it works. PubMed Search .

Relating Your Search to a Specific Country or State

Medline allows you to search for health information as it relates to individual countries. For example

MeSH - Australia

Exploding this thesaurus term will search for Australia as a whole, and the individual states and territories as well, whereas if you simply search for the word "Australia*" you will miss the specific individual states.

When searching for material relating to specific countries it can be useful to search the name of the country as a word too, with appropriate truncation. For example

Australia* - truncating the word will search for Australia, or Australian as words in any field.

The search formulation will need brackets to ensure that the Boolean logic is executed in the correct sequence.

Try the sample search on the epidemiology of lung cancer in relation to smoking, but this time limit the search to Australian studies.

PubMed Search Formulation

lung neoplasms/ep[mh] AND smoking[mh] AND (Australia[mh] OR Australia*) AND english[lang]

Click here to see how it works. PubMed Search.

WARNING
When you are limiting a search using the epidemiology subheading ep, you will find that you can add it to either the disease term OR the geographic term OR both, but the results will be very different!

For Australian material don't forget to check Meditext too - it uses the same thesaurus terms as Medline.

Meditext
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University
Bibliographic database which indexes and abstracts articles from Australian health and medical journals which are not indexed in Medline. It covers all aspects of health and medicine with an emphasis on clinical medicine and paraprofessional fields. Includes journals, conference proceedings, government reports, selected monographs and the full text of most NHMRC sessions. Contains full text for a number of publications for which there is no other full text online source available.

Other Australian Resources

Central Northern Adelaide Health Service: A Social Health Atlas
From the Public Health Information Development Unit (PHIDU), a collaborating unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, located at The University of Adelaide in the Australian Institute for Social Research.

HealthMap (A Social Health Atlas of South Australia, 2nd ed. 1996)
Access is available only within the Library - it is not networked
Aims to provide health services with the best possible information to assist their work, by publishing a large range of information in map format. Provides an overview of the health status and patterns of use of health and welfare services in different areas of the state, in the context of socio-economic status. The atlas contains maps categorised under the broad headings of:
Demography and socioeconomic status
Income Support payments
Health status
Utilisation of health and welfare services
Location of health and welfare services

HealthWIZ
Access is available only within the Library - it is not networked
Consists of statistical data held in the National Social Health Database which can be used to understand and describe characteristics of local populations, analyse patterns and trends in the use of local health services, establish patterns of health and illness at a local level, discover geographic variations in health related characteristics of populations, and demonstrate links between health, service use and socio-economic factors relating to health. It is intended for use by workers in the fields of community health and welfare, planners, advocates, researchers, educators, and students.

It is produced for the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, by a company called Prometheus Information.The HealthWIZ CD-ROM is available for loan, and supporting documentation is available at the HealthWIZ web site.

A Social Health Atlas of Australia. 2nd. edition, 1999
A social health atlas of Australia, by John Glover, Kevin Harris, and Sarah Tennant. Public Health Information Development Unit, University of Adelaide, 1999. This publication consists of 9 volumes - one for Australia as a whole, and one for each state or territory.

Social Health Atlas of South Australia (Online), 2008
Public Health Information Development Unit, University of Adelaide.

Burden of Disease

Burden of Disease (AIHW)
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's burdern of disease page, with links to data, and the full text of a selected publications.

Burden of Disease: Health Status of Victorians - Victorian Government Health Information, Australia
Burden of disease estimates for Victoria, its local government areas and regions, for broad disease groups and/or specific diseases, by sex and up to 9 age groups are available.

Problems and solutions in calculating quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)
By Luis Prieto and José A Sacristán
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003, 1:80.

QALY
From Bandolier, an essay on QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year), and on implementing QALYs.

Report of the NSW Chief Health Officer: Burden of disease

South Australian Burden of Disease Study
The aim of the South Australian Burden of Disease study is to describe the average amount of ill health and premature death occurring in the South Australian community.

WHO | Burden of Disease statistics

WHO | Disability adjusted life years (DALY)

Other Sources

CDC WONDER
CDC WONDER (Wide-ranging OnLine Data for Epidemiologic Research) is an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) available to public health professionals and the public at large. It provides access to a wide array of public health information.

bmj.com Topics : Epidemiologic studies

bmj.com Topics : Screening (epidemiology)

Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics
As part of the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program, Contagion offers valuable insights to students of the history of medicine and to researchers seeking an historical context for current epidemiology, contributing to the understanding of the global, social–history, and public–policy implications of disease.

eMJA: Articles on Statistics, epidemiology and research design

Epi Info
Epi Info is a public domain software package designed for the global community of public health practitioners and researchers and available from the CDC web site. It allows for easy form and database construction, data entry, and analysis with epidemiologic statistics, maps, and graphs.

Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Links from the Karolinska Institute Library.

Epidemiology for the Uninitiated. 4th ed. 1997
Here you will find the full text of the 4th edition of Epidemiology for the Uninitiated, by D Coggon, Geoffrey Rose, and DJP Barker. BMJ Publishing Group 1997.

Health Report - Epidemiology
Transcripts from Radio National's Health Report, with Norman Swan.

Population Research and Outcome Studies - PROS Publications
From the Department of Health, South Australia. Some reports available in .pdf format.

Population Research and Outcome Studies - PROS Reports
From the Department of Health, South Australia. Many reports are available in .pdf format.

Returns on Investment in Public Health: An Epidemiological and Economic Analysis
Returns on investment in public health : an epidemiological and economic analysis prepared for the Department of Health and Ageing / Applied Economics, by Peter Abelson and others. Canberra : Dept. of Health and Ageing, 2003.

Supercourse - Epidemiology, the Internet and Global Health
This course is designed to provide an overview on epidemiology and the Internet for medical and health related students around the world.

The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Epidemiology
This page is maintained by the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco.