Introduction

Epidemiology is classically described as the study of the distribution and causes of disease in populations. Usually three inter-related areas in epidemiology are recognized; surveillance (description of disease patterns), a search of causal relationships in observational data (like risk factor epidemiology), and randomized trials (human-controlled experiments). Biostatistics provides the logic and scientific tools.

The Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine offers research and training opportunities in the epidemiology of human diseases with an emphasis on chronically and infectious disease epidemiology as well as environmental and occupational health and disease. Students have an opportunity to learn advanced techniques in research methods, epidemiologic data analysis and biomedical statistics. Students also select courses from a long list of electives in the epidemiology of cancer, cardiovascular, occupational, environmental diseases and the epidemiology of nutrition, health services, community health and gerontology. Programs lead to Ph.D. or M.Sc. degrees. Additional programs of study in the areas of environmental and occupational health, risk management, econometrics and molecular epidemiology are offered in collaboration with other academic units. Students are encouraged to design their own program and interact closely with several faculty members in the choice of appropriate core and elective courses in addition to a research thesis. All courses are taught in Hebrew. Upon completion of the program, participants will receive an MSc or PhD degree.