Review Malaria Epidemiology

Published

June 21, 2023

Make sure you’re familiar with these fundamental concepts of malaria epidemiology

Pre-Requisites

The crash course in Week 0 will assume familiarity with certain concepts. If you are not familiar with them, please review these resources before the crash course:

StatPearls - Epidemiology of Study Design

  • Observational vs. Cohort vs. Experimental Studies

CDC Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice

  • Lesson One: Intro to Epidemiology
    • Key features and applications of descriptive & analytic epidemiology
  • Lesson Two: Summarizing Data
    • Calculating and interpreting mean, median, mode, ranges, variance, standard deviation, and confidence intervals
  • Lesson Three: Measures of Risk
    • Calculating and interpreting ratios, proportions, incidence rates, mortality rates, prevalence, and years of potential life lost

Crash Course Objectives

During Week 0, we will host a malaria epidemiology crash course, focused on these learning objectives:

  • Describe malaria pathogenesis and disease burden metrics in humans
  • Describe factors that affect the disease burden, including impact of interventions and host factors such as age and immunity
  • Overview of epidemiological methods for measuring malaria morbidity and mortality and how information can be collected
  • Identify examples of error, bias, confounding, and validity in malaria studies
  • Describe the life-cycle of human malaria parasites, key stages, and their relevance to transmission and control
  • Relate the parasite life cycle to pathogenesis, immune responses, and interventions
  • Describe the life- and feeding cycle of malaria vectors