Case Study: Descriptive Epidemiology

;If you read the “Health” page (either paper or web-based) of any major news source (e.g., ;The New York Times, ;CNN), ;reports of the occurrence of health outcomes are common headlines. For ;example, you may see the following or similar headlines:

“Breast Cancer Increasing in Asian-American Women” ;
“Teenage Smoking at an All-Time Low”

Have you ever wondered where this information comes from and what it really means?

Governmental agencies and other organizations routinely ;collect descriptive epidemiological statistics on many health outcomes. ;For example, statistics on the occurrence of cancer in the United ;States have been continuously collected since the early 1970s through ;the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the ;National Cancer Institute.

For this Case Study Assignment, you will analyze and ;interpret descriptive epidemiologic statistics. To prepare for this ;Assignment, review the material presented in the textbook.

A case study worksheet will be provided by your ;instructor for this Assignment in the form of a Microsoft Word document. ;Download the worksheet and type your answers directly into the document ;to complete the Assignment. Be sure that your completed worksheet ;contains your responses to all questions.

Prior to submitting your Descriptive Epidemiology Case Study, review the Module 2 Case Study Assignment Rubric.