The Epidemiological Imagination - Softcover

"This book has been designed to introduce interested readers to epidemiological thinking in a unique and highly effective manner...This work is one of the most interesting and stimulating presentations of the complexity, richness and breadth of this very important, yet little understood, health-related science." - Choice Magazine "This Open University reader...is a joy for anyone with the slightest interest in public health or a liking for good detective stories...If you think that epidemiology is boring and has no relevance to clinical practice, buy this book. It will change your mind." - Family Practice "This idea behind this excellent book is to enhance the teaching of epidemiology, both for teachers and for students, through past-published examples of creative andimaginative epidemiological work...In all, it is a remarkable book and one which deserves attention from epidemiologists at all stages of their careers, however they seek to give expression to their own capacities for epidemiological imagination." - International Journal of Epidemiology "This brilliantly conceived text draws on the accumulated wisdom of a number of leading contemporary epidemiologists who each select and introduce a pair of papers one new and one old." - Institute of Health Education Recommended Paperbacks

Public health is once again in the spotlight after several decades of being eclipsed by high tech, individually-oriented medical science. The reasons for this are not hard to find - the ever escalating costs of medical care, growing disillusionment with the return on investment, particularly for the poorer sections of the community, and a growing recognition of the importance of health promotion and preventative strategies which focus on the environmental and behavioural determinants of health and disease.

At the heart of the public health perspective is an emphasis on understanding whole populations through the application of epidemiological analysis. This reader addresses the need to make available some of the classics of epidemiology to the new generations of students who are now trained in public-health, and to share with them the excitement of the epidemiological method.

There is a wealth of experience in our collective public-health past and as we shape the new public health there is a danger of ignoring lessons from the old. By drawing on the choices of leading contemporary epidemiologists in selecting published papers both old and new, this volume aims to make the classics accessible to teachers and students alike.