Disease Detectives B/C

[GrayEpi]

is this event very hard, I've never done it before but am very interested.

It isn't very difficult. It just has many aspects to it. I suggest you start studying the basics such as modes of transmission and calculations of measures of risk, but from this being my third year I have began to notice that it is a very logical based event that also needs studying and a good cheat sheet. If you are a good problem solver and aren't afraid of using math and writing evidence backing your statement and such then this is for you.

Dr3Ham - You made my day. Nothing particularly difficult but it takes a while to get this. We expanded it to middle school with idea the competitors should have the basics down by the time they got to high school. Most of the major concepts are in Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice 3rd edition-available free online from CDC.

[Whiteheat073]

Does disease detectives focus more on genetic diseases or more on other diseases?

[platinumfalcon]

Can anyone give a brief overview of what a division B disease detectives test would look like (if you have taken it before)?
Also, for div B, are the terms listed on the scioly website enough? And which chapters from Principles of Epi are the most important?
Thanks!

[ampy1234567]

Does disease detectives focus more on genetic diseases or more on other diseases?

Disease Detectives mainly focuses on infectious diseases and the study of how they spread. But remember, contrary what a lot of people think, it does not really focus on individual individual diseases.

Can anyone give a brief overview of what a division B disease detectives test would look like (if you have taken it before)?
Also, for div B, are the terms listed on the scioly website enough? And which chapters from Principles of Epi are the most important?
Thanks!

Basically every test I've seen anywhere has basic terms on it either in a matching or fill-in-the-blank form. A lot of the time there's sections in which you just write the components of a triad of the steps investigating an outbreak. There's almost always going to be RR/OR calculations as well. The scioly page terms are enough for the most part, but there's a lot of terms that aren't on there and aren't extremely common but may show up regardless (natality, mortality, morbidity, isolation, quarantine, line listing, cross-contamination, etc.). And I can't speak for the Principles of Epi too well since I haven't much of it, but I'd say that Lesson 1 and Measures of Association (in Lesson 3) would be the most important to read, although the whole thing looks pretty valuable.

[platinumfalcon]

Hmm, could you list some key population growth diseases (besides Ebola/Lyme)?

[ampy1234567]

Hmm, could you list some key population growth diseases (besides Ebola/Lyme)?

West Nile and Nipah come to mind. Remember that most population growth diseases are zoonosis's (idk how to make zoonosis plural lol)

[platinumfalcon]

Sorry, one more question; I was looking at some old tests on the 2016 exchange for practice, and many had some statistics (standard deviation/Z measure/Chi-squared/etc...); what statistics are required for division B?

[ampy1234567]

There shouldn't be anything besides RR, OR, and maybe some easy stuff like averages.

[QuantumTech]

Do we need to know the different sub-types of statistical tests (such as one-tail and two-tail Z-Tests)? I have Chi-square and One Sample Z-Test down, but the list seems endless.

The Statistic Overview on soinc.org (https://www.soinc.org/sites/default/fil ... CS_C_0.pdf) provides a great overview on the common stats tests you need to know, and based off that I don't think you'd need to go that in-depth. Correct me if I'm wrong

OK, that's what I thought. The different version of the Z-tests are intimidating, and I'm still not sure which ones fit the scenario. The worst part is that I can't find many statistical tests on the practice tests... So far all I've seen are chi-square and z-test. Has anybody seen McNemar's, Fischer's, and Mantel-Haenszel at the Regionals/State level.

[GrayEpi]

Sorry, one more question; I was looking at some old tests on the 2016 exchange for practice, and many had some statistics (standard deviation/Z measure/Chi-squared/etc...); what statistics are required for division B?

Although one could argue the point, not all calculations used by epidemiologists are "statistics". Rates (i.e., incidence, prevalence, birth rate, mortality rate, case fatality rate, attack rate) and measures of association (relative risk and odds ratios) are in that gray area - sort of like calculating means, medians and modes - and are part of Division B material. Determining confidence intervals and hypothesis testing for those measures are generally considered to be statistics and are Division C material. Hope this helps