Disease Detectives B/C

[bernard]

[bruhnugget]

I am new to Disease Detectives, and I need some help, so what are your advices for people like me?

[Thenerdicat]

I am new to Disease Detectives, and I need some help, so what are your advices for people like me?

Hello there!
Disease Detectives is an event centered around epidemiology, public health, disease/outbreak control, investigation, and prevention, with a bit of microbiology/disease knowledge and statistics thrown into the mix. Contrary to what its name might suggest, it's more statistics and field-study oriented than the other events that would fall under the "Life Sciences" category of events.
Now that's out of the way, with starting out--
I'd recommend you read through two VERY important sites/documents for you to actually understand how this event works so you know how to go from there--
The Science Olympiad 2023-2024 rules manual: You can access the rules manual that lists the events and their rules for competition each year here from SOINC.org: https://www.soinc.org/rules-2024
Note that rules will release each year the day after (Tuesday) after Labor Day--you just fill out the form with your information and they will email you a copy of the manual. Division B is middle school (6th-9th), Division C is high school (9th-12th). Rules will break down how Disease Detectives works--the layout, the format, and the topics tested. If you don't know the rules for your events you won't be able to understand your events that well
The scioly.org Disease Detectives wiki page: This is the (updated) page on the scioly.org site that explains each topic about Disease Detectives incredibly well--if you're confused about where to start, this should be the place you start at
https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Disease_Detectives

Outside of that, I also recommend you to do some googling/reading; this stuff I've compiled wouldn't be mandatory but is highly recommended:
The CDC Principles of Epidemiology can be found online for free here--it's very nice if you want a thorough explanation of how epidemiology works, and a lot of tests pull directly from it: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6914
The WHO Epidemiology textbook is also nice--I found it was good at explaining the math and rates to me as well as the more conceptual epidemiological lingo (the Amazon link is here): https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Epidemiolo ... 9241547073
A-Z List of Infectious Diseases should familiarize you with a lot of the diseases that might come up--just know test writers tend to write a lot about foodborne illnesses: https://health.ri.gov/diseases/infectious/
SOINC has some good stuff for a lot of the specifics that would be tested on tests and breaks it down: https://www.soinc.org/disease-detectives-c
Epiville is a module index that walks you through the more field work-related stuff that comes with the epidemiology that this event tests: https://epiville.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/
I'd also recommend you picking up some basic statistics knowledge--the CDC and WHO textbook should cover all the basics that this event will test--don't sweat it too much. I'd focus a lot on the types of rates, what they mean, and how to do them quick.

The key to this event is also to practice--there are a surplus of past tests uploaded online about this event for you to practice on.
Scioly.org runs two main test archives: https://scioly.org/tests/ and https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Test_Exchange_Archive
There are also a few invitationals that publicize their past test sets--from what I remember, BirdSO, Rickards, ATX (UT Austin), Princeton University SO (PUSO), MIT, and Yale Undergraduate SO (YUSO) are a few competitions that publicize their past tests
Practice is probably key to learning this event--the more you practice, the more easily you'll absorb the concepts and the quicker you'll be able to apply them in a test

Good luck and happy Disease Detecting!