Undergraduate Epidemiology Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide

Epidemiology, the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to the control of health problems, is a critical field in public health. An undergraduate major in epidemiology provides students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to assess population health, examine factors associated with disease development and prevention, and analyze data relevant to public health outcomes. This article offers a detailed overview of a typical undergraduate epidemiology curriculum, covering admission criteria, course requirements, and other essential components.

Admission to the Epidemiology Major

For current students interested in pursuing an epidemiology major, the initial step involves completing a change of major form, which may be obtained from the relevant academic department.

Core Components of the Curriculum

A well-structured undergraduate epidemiology curriculum typically encompasses public health core courses, other required courses, and epidemiology-specific courses.

Public Health Core Courses

These courses provide a broad foundation in public health principles and practices. A typical core includes the following topics:

Introduction to Public Health: This introductory course considers the meaning, scope, and applications of epidemiology to public health practice and the uses of vital statistics data in the scientific appraisal of community health.
Historical and Contemporary Public Health Problems: An examination of significant public health challenges throughout history and those facing the world today.
Health and Disease: Biological, Personal, and Environmental Influences: Exploration of the multifaceted factors that impact health outcomes.
Asking and Answering Scientific Questions in Public Health: Development of skills in formulating research questions and designing studies to address them.
Models and Mechanisms for Understanding Public Health: Understanding models and mechanisms for public health.
Interventions to Address Public Health Problems: Focus on strategies and programs designed to improve public health.
Public Health Systems and Policies: An overview of the structures and policies that govern public health initiatives.

In addition to these, some programs may require students to take introductory-level public health courses, providing a general overview of the field.

Read also: Undergraduate Programs at UNC

Other Required Courses

These courses provide foundational knowledge in related scientific disciplines. Common requirements include:

General Chemistry: Introduction to fundamental chemistry principles.
Human Physiology: Study of the functions and mechanisms of the human body.
Introduction to American Politics or Introductory Psychology or Introduction to Sociology: Providing a social science foundation.
Statistical Methods: Instruction in basic statistical concepts and techniques.

Epidemiology Core Courses

The epidemiology core provides specialized knowledge and skills specific to the field. This includes:

Principles of Epidemiology: An intensive introduction to epidemiological concepts and methods from a perspective of causal inference. This course is for students intending to lead, engage in, collaborate in, or interpret the results of epidemiologic studies.
History of Epidemiology: Delving into the historical development of epidemiological principles and practices.
Principles of Epidemiology for Public Health: Covers the meaning, scope, and applications of epidemiology to public health practice and the uses of vital statistics data in the scientific appraisal of community health.
Advanced Methodology: An in-depth exploration of advanced epidemiological methods.
Application of Biostatistics to Epidemiology: Applying biostatistical methods to epidemiological research.
Graduate Seminar: A forum for discussing current research and emerging issues in epidemiology.
Research and Professional Development: Guidance on research methodologies and career development in the field.
Statistical Analysis: Application of statistical techniques in epidemiological studies.
SAS and Data Management: An introduction to statistical analysis, programming, and data management, using the SAS programming language.
R for Epidemiologists: Establishing a foundation in the R programming language, RStudio IDE, and functional programming modalities, with special attention given to R topics and packages relevant for epidemiological data management, analysis, and visualization.
Systematic Review: Assessing and conducting systematic reviews, focusing on reading, discussing, and critiquing systematic reviews on various topics; reading background and methods articles on systematic reviews; developing a focused question for systematic review; and developing a protocol for a systematic review over the semester.
Responsible Epidemiology: Providing foundational content on health equity and social determinants of health.
Introduction to Deductive and Probability Logic in Epidemiology: Covering properties of logical relations, truth tables and Euler diagrams, valid and fallacious arguments, cognitive heuristics and biases, interpretations of probability, the probability calculus, Bayes' theorem, binomial and normal distributions, applications of probability logic and probabilistic fallacies, all in an epidemiologic context.
Clinical Measurement and Evaluation: Introduction to the concepts and methods of epidemiology with particular emphasis on their application in clinical research, clinical practice and health care policy.
Readings in Fundamentals of Epidemiology: Applying the concepts and methods introduced in introductory epidemiology courses to readings in the epidemiologic, biomedical, and public health research literature.
Theory and Quantitative Methods in Epidemiology: An in-depth treatment of basic concepts and skills in epidemiologic research, including problem conceptualization, study design, research conduct, data analysis, and interpretation.
Epidemiologic Data Analysis: Hands-on experience in the analysis and interpretation of data from cohort and case-control studies.
Advanced Epidemiologic Methods: Covering epidemiologic analysis of time-to-event data and emphasizes weighing threats to the accuracy of inferences.
Analytic Methods in Observational Epidemiology: Provides an in-depth treatment of the analysis of data from observational epidemiologic studies, including both tabular and regression modeling approaches, and with an emphasis on the importance of study design in developing and executing an analysis plan.
Readings in Epidemiologic Methods: A discussion in journal-club format of readings in general epidemiologic methods, from problem conceptualization to application of results.
Epidemiologic Research Methods: A course in the design and conduct of epidemiologic research. Each student will comprehensively address the conceptual and practical aspects of developing a high-quality, detailed research proposal.

Electives

Electives allow students to specialize in specific areas of interest within epidemiology. Some examples include:

Injury as a Public Health Problem: Examining unintentional injuries from a public health perspective, covering core concepts in injury prevention and control, including the epidemiology of unintentional injury, prevention strategies, behavioral models, child and adolescent injury, messaging framing, the Haddon matrix, and injury surveillance.
Violence as a Public Health Problem: Covering core concepts in violence prevention and control, including the epidemiology of violence, prevention strategies for inter-personal and intra-personal violence, behavioral models that describe power structures that reinforce personal and societal factors affecting self-harm and violence towards others, and violence directed towards children and adolescents.
Research in Epidemiology: Conducting research as part of an ongoing epidemiology project or as an independent activity.
Problems in Epidemiology: Making an intensive study of some special problems in epidemiology.
Cardiovascular Epidemiology: Review of cardiovascular health and disease in populations and their population determinants, including epidemiologic methods, risk factors, strategies for prevention, and a student research project.
Methods and Applications of Cardiovascular Disease Surveillance: Gaining experience critiquing and interpreting national and international cardiovascular disease (CVD) surveillance programs, evaluate recommendations for future CVD surveillance research and policy, and to explore CVD surveillance data sources with hands-on experience with practical aspects of study conduct.
Epidemiology of Stroke: Becoming familiar with physiologic and pathologic aspects of cerebrovascular diseases, provides opportunity to explore research findings regarding major risk factors for stroke and evidence for prevention strategies, and offers a guided experience in critiquing, synthesizing, and communicating stroke related research findings.
Contemporary Issues in Hypertension Research: Examining contemporary issues related to hypertension research, particularly pertaining to measurement of blood pressure.
Biomarkers in Population-Based Research: Surveying the major issues relevant to the application of biomarkers in epidemiological research, including the logistical hurdles in biospecimen collection and storage, assessments of biomarker quality, analytic issues, and the interpretation of quantitative estimates.
Genetic Epidemiology: Concepts and methods of genetic epidemiology relevant to the study of complex human diseases, including segregation analysis, linkage analysis, and gene-environment interaction, including whole genome approaches, as well as nonhuman systems.
Fundamentals of Public Health Surveillance: Providing the conceptual foundations and practical skills for designing and implementing surveillance systems, for using surveillance data for the conduct and evaluation of public health programs and research.
Biological Basis of Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Familiarizing students with the biological factors underpinning the epidemiology of infectious diseases, including emerging and endemic viral and bacterial diseases, innate and adaptive immunity, vaccine and therapeutic development, and the public health challenges of infectious disease response.
Advanced Methods in Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Covering theories, concepts, study designs, and analytical methods of particular importance in studying infectious outcomes, including lectures, hands-on computer practicals, article discussions, and written assignments.
Introduction to Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Covering concepts, theory, study designs, and analytical methods of particular importance in infectious disease epidemiology.
Introduction to Infectious Disease Modeling and Simulation in R: Basic concepts and skills needed to use R software for infectious disease modeling and simulations, including lectures and coding demonstrations, implementing compartmental and stochastic models and simulate epidemic dynamics.
Problem Solving Seminar in Advanced Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Exploring how a combination of the biological understanding of disease processes and advanced methods in infectious disease analytics are essential to understanding critical problems in infectious disease, including the interpretation of surveillance data, the design of control measures and projecting the course of epidemics.
Methods and Principles of Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology: Covering the interaction between an infectious agent, host, and environment; modes and dynamics of transmission; the role of immunity in infectious disease epidemiology; and disease elimination strategies.
Methods in Field Epidemiology: Focusing on epidemiological methods required to investigate urgent public health problems, covering the skills and tools needed to conduct outbreak investigations and communicate findings to the public.
Vaccine Epidemiology: An overview of vaccinology principles, mechanisms of action, and herd protection, and statistical considerations, understanding of how vaccines are produced by industry, undergo preclinical evaluation, and evaluated for efficacy in clinical trials.
Survey Research: Learning about survey research.
Field Epidemiology: Conducting field research.
Cardiovascular Epidemiology: Studying cardiovascular epidemiology.
Chronic Diseases Epidemiology: Studying chronic diseases epidemiology.
Nutritional Epidemiology: Studying nutritional epidemiology.
Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases: Studying epidemiology of infectious diseases.
Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology: Studying environmental and occupational epidemiology.
Injury Epidemiology and Emergency Care Research Methods: Studying injury epidemiology and emergency care research methods.
Design of Clinical Trials: Learning about the design of clinical trials.
Introduction to Geographic Systems: Introduction to geographic systems.
Environmental Health: Studying environmental health.
Community Engagement Internship: Participating in a community engagement internship.
Intro to Mathematical Models in the Life: Studying mathematical models.
Introduction to Probability: Introduction to probability.
Introduction to Mathematical Statistics: Introduction to mathematical statistics.
Applied Statistical Methods II: Studying statistical methods.
Nonparametic Inference: Studying nonparametic inference.
Sampling Techniques: Studying sampling techniques.
Statistical Computing in R: Studying statistical computing.
Introduction to Statistical Software and Exploratory Data Analysis: Introduction to statistical software and exploratory data analysis.

Additional Degree Requirements

Beyond the core coursework, undergraduate epidemiology programs often have additional requirements:

General Education Requirements: Completion of courses in areas such as humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Elective Credits: Additional coursework to reach the required total credit hours for graduation.
Minor: Some programs require students to complete a minor in a related field.
Writing-Intensive Courses: Completion of writing-intensive courses to develop strong communication skills.

Academic Standards

Maintaining a satisfactory GPA is crucial for remaining in good standing within the epidemiology major. Many programs have minimum GPA requirements for graduation.

Curricular Plan

A well-designed curricular plan serves as a roadmap for students, ensuring they complete all required coursework and fulfill degree requirements in a timely manner.