The course will cover the fundamentals for evaluating epidemiologic evidence for cancer risk factors (study designs, causal inference); assessing the cancer risk attributable to specific risk factors/exposures (attributable risk, meta-analysis); descriptive epidemiology and global burden of cancer (incidence and mortality data, time trends); cancer biology (carcinogenesis, genetics, molecular biology); important preventable or avoidable exposures (chemicals, nutrition, tobacco, occupation, infection, ionizing radiation); and cancer prevention and control. Emphasis will be on specific preventable exposures for major cancers and methods for assessing opportunites for prevention.
The course is intended to develop skills in the evaluation of risk factors and exposure prevention. Students will participate in hands-on exercises and critical review of journal articles. Participation in class discussion is an important part of the course. Students will prepare a class project and present interim and final presentations of this work.
At the end of the course, students will understand:
- Major sites of cancer and their epidemiologic characteristics including age, sex, race and geographic distributions, time trends, and major risk factors.
- Molecular basis of cancer and carcinogenesis.
- Causal inference in the context of cancer epidemiology.
- How to assess the cancer risk attributable to modifiable exposures.
- Methodologic issues associated with specific study designs for assessing relative and attributable risks of specific exposures for specific neoplasms.
- Major modifiable exposures of etiologic significance, including their possible mechanisms of action, their distributions in the population, and methodologic issues involved in studying them.
- Instructor: John
- Instructor: Robert Hiatt
- Instructor: Catherine