Community Medicine 2

International, national and regional health service organization
Quality improvement: tools and programs

Introduction to statistics: variability of biological and clinical data. Study planning and data collection.
Qualitative and quantitative variables. Frequencies and relative frequencies distribution. Graphical representations: bar-chart and pie-charts, histograms. Synthesis of the data: Measure of central tendency (modal value, median, mean) and variability (range, interquartile range, standard deviation, variance, variation coefficient).
Elements of probability. Empirical distribution and theoretical models: Bernoulli, Binomial and Gaussian distributions. Incidence and prevalence.
Diagnostic tests: screening, sensitivity and specificity; positive and negative likelihood ratio, positive and negative predictive value.
Statistical inference and sampling. Sample mean distribution, standard error of the mean and confidence interval for the sampling mean. The logic of the hypothesis test. Comparison test of a mean and a proportion with a known value. P-value.
Contingency table analysis: chi-square test.
Notes on the design of the study in medicine: observational and experimental studies

Analysis of the phenomenon of international travels and travelers' profiles; health risks and how to evaluate them; the activity of the travel medicine clinic; epidemiology of the main infectious diseases by geographical area; focus on faecal-oral transmission diseases; focus on vector-borne diseases; behavioral measures and vaccination prophylaxis; tutorial and exercises on some travel scenarios.