Based on my proposed project: In Hispanic elderly population, aged between 65 and 90 years in a Community Health setting in Miami-Dade area, (I) does implementation of a vaccination screening program, (C) compared to no program, (O) improve vaccination rates, (T) over 16 weeks?, epidemiological or biostatistical tools can be used to better assess the health problem involved.
Epidemiology is a branch of science which deals with the determination of the occurrence of various health diseases and disorders. It allows researchers to know the measures of incidence and prevalence of a particular health problem (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, n.d.). On the other hand, biostatistics is considered as a branch of statistics which deals with various theories and applications associated with various health concerns and research (Harvard T.H. Chan, n.d.).
Taking into consideration my proposed project, the best terminology that can measure the magnitude of the vaccination problem is risk. Risk can be defined as the chance or probability that a particular disease or illness will occur. Risk is the best measure for the evidenced based project because the association between the vaccination rates for a population with a vaccination screening program and for a population without a vaccination screening program must be determined. To be more specific, the epidemiological terms that should be computed include absolute risk, relative risk, and even attributable risk. Absolute risk can also be termed as incidence rate. It can be computed by determining the number of occurrences in a specified period of time. On the other hand, relative risk can be computed by using the ratios of incidence rates. Lastly, attributable risk can be determined by computing for the attributable risk of the population and the attributable risk for the exposed population (Moulton, 2011; Columbia University, n.d.).
References
Columbia University. (n.d.). Glossary of Epidemiology. Columbia University. Retrieved from http://www.cs.columbia.edu/digigov/LEXING/CDCEPI/gloss.html [Accessed on 3 Mar 2016].
Harvard T.H. Chan. (n.d.). Department of Biostatistics. Harvard T.H. Chan: School of Public Health. Retrieved from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/ [Accessed on 3 Mar 2016].
Moulton, G. (2011). Basic Statistics for Epidemiology: Risk. Health and Public Health Knowledgeblog. Retrieved from http://health.knowledgeblog.org/2011/07/22/basic-statistics-for-epidemiology-risk/ [Accessed on 3 Mar 2016].
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. (n.d.). What is Epidemiology?. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Retrieved from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/Pages/epidemiology.aspx [Accessed on 3 Mar 2016].
