Disease Detectives?

One of the first activities in my course module – Issues in Public Health was looking at the role of an epidemiologist.

What is an epidemiologist?

The explanation I personally love was by the CDC* who described them quite aptly as ‘Disease Detectives’. These sleuths search for clues looking for the cause of disease, try and identify who are the people at risk and then try to figure out how we can stop the disease from spreading and preventing a future episode.

And while familiar, I definitely did not realise that there were some differeing opinions on what the focus of epidemiologists or public health should be.

The critique has been that the focus has been to much on individual risk factors while excluding all the other factors that contribute to disease.

But should public health professionals be focusing on the social determinants of health solely OR other individual risk factors?

A good example used was in discussing how to combat Malnutrition. How do we solve this and what should the focus be?

Do we take a step back and address the other social issues contributing to poverty leading to malnutrition. Or do we spend time and effort finding out that by supplementing Vitamin A in these individuals we greatly reduce their risk of blindness and death by starting them on Vitamin A supplements? While we haven’t solved the issue of Malnutrition per se, I feel it is better to be doing something that reduces the negative outcomes cause the reality is that pushing for those changes with bureaucracy can be long-drawn out. So, why not assist and intervene where we can?

However, this of course does mean that we are diverting our focus, energy and more importantly our already limited resources. And is it then the best utilisation of our resources? – now that’s a concept in Health Economics that we will discuss in another post.

But what do you think?

---

*CDC – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Public health at the crossroads: which way forward?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)09494-4/fulltext
–> this article is available for free

Should the mission of epidemiology include the eradication of poverty?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(98)01327-0/fulltext
–> this is unfortunately paid unless you have access