Epidemiology - Advocacy

Advocacy

As a public health discipline, epidemiologic evidence is often used to advocate both personal measures like diet change and corporate measures like removal of junk food advertising, with study findings disseminated to the general public to help people to make informed decisions about their health. Often the uncertainties about these findings are not communicated well; news articles often prominently report the latest result of one study with little mention of its limitations, caveats, or context. Epidemiological tools have proved effective in establishing major causes of diseases like cholera and lung cancer, but experience difficulty in regards to more subtle health issues where causation is more complex. Notably, conclusions drawn from observational studies may be reconsidered as later data from randomized controlled trials becomes available, as was the case with the association between the use of hormone replacement therapy and cardiac risk.