Junior professorship for epidemiology

Epidemiology has been implemented as a teaching and research field at the Institute of Sociology in 2014. It is part of its research focus on sociology of health and a subject of the newly established master of public health program.

What is epidemiology?

Epidemiology is a methodological core discipline of public health which examines the distribution of health incidents and their influencing factors in the population – in contrast to medicine which deals with the health problems of individuals. Health incidents (often referred to as “outcomes“ in epidemiology) for example are illness, death and recovery. Factors of influence (often referred to as “exposures“ in epidemiology) include health behaviors such as smoking and physical activity, or environmental factors such as dust and noise.

Using a broad spectrum of descriptive and analytical methods, epidemiology provides information on, e.g., the distribution of cancer in the population or on the development of the prevalence of smoking over time. Epidemiology also examines the association between exposures and outcomes and, for instance, can investigate whether the use of cell phones is associated with an increased risk of brain tumor and can tell which risk factors contribute to stroke.

Epidemiology aims to actively contribute to policy-making in order to improve the health of the population. For example, it is also due to epidemiology that smoking has been recognized as a risk factor for lung cancer – a long time before researchers understood the respective microbiological mechanisms that are involved in the process. Also, epidemiological methods are indispensable for evaluating health interventions.