Public health strives to improve the health of human populations, and prevent disease, disability, and death. Statistics--the science of finding underlying patterns by analyzing variability and errors in collected data--is essential to the understanding of disease patterns in human populations. Other quantitative methods, such as economics, decision theory, and mathematics, now constitute integral parts of the scientific basis for priority-setting and evaluation in public health.
This book provides a broad conceptual treatment of the statistical issues underlying core public health...

Public health faces critical challenges ranging from outbreaks of new and old pathogens to the threat of bioterrorism and the impact of lifestyle and environmental changes on health. Modern tools of health surveillance and sound statistical practices are essential for meeting these challenges and providing accurate warnings about real public health threats without wasting resources on false alarms. Advances in statistical techniques, computing power and the Internet have led to many new approaches to monitoring population health, analyzing the data, and rapidly sharing it.
This text...