Epidemiology

Overview

Researchers in the department of Social Medicine investigate the aetiology, prevention, treatment and experience of many types of disease, including  cardiovascular disease. This involves various methodologies, as outlined below:

Methodological development and implementation of phase III randomised controlled trials

Statistical analysis, economic evaluation, recruitment, participant/recruiter perspectives, schools-based interventions, meta-analysis. Now formally under the umbrella of the NCRI-accredited Bristol Randomised Trials Collaboration (Departments of Community-Based Medicine and Social Medicine, and Bristol Oncology Centre).

Lifecourse epidemiology involves the investigation of exposures acting at different stages of the life course that may contribute to risk of disease in adulthood, either from the simple accumulation of effects over time, or through exposures acting at critical time periods, or through interactions between exposures occurring at different stages of lifecourse. These studies are based in a wide range of historical and contemporary cohort studies.

Genetic and molecular epidemiology

To examine ways in which genotypes can aid understanding of the relationships between life-course exposures and adult diseases, to develop methods for dissemination and introduction into practice of genetic epidemiology findings, and to use the principles of Mendelian randomisation to examine the role of environmental exposures for obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, CHD and common cancers.

Bristol Genetic Epidemiology Laboratories Website>>

Population needs and outcome assessment

Inequalities in health; inequalities in access to and utilisation of health services; modelling disease trends and future healthcare needs; perceptions of need; rationing; needs assessment; development of outcome measures; evaluation of health care interventions and outcome.

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) "Children of the 90's"

To understand the ways in which the physical and social environment interact, over time, with genetic inheritance to affect the child's health, behaviour and development.
ALSPAC website>>