Epidemiology is a discipline that assesses the magnitude of public health problems, identifies the determinants of defects, disease and injury in human populations, and guides interventions designed to control or prevent them. The goals of this course are to: (1) introduce the basic principles and methods of epidemiology; (2) demonstrate their applicability to public health and research; and (3) provide fundamental skills needed to begin to interpret and critically evaluate literature relevant to public health professionals. Topics include measures of disease frequency and association, epidemiologic study designs, bias, confounding, random error, screening and causation.