Why are Epidemiologists so Bad at Epidemics?

Department of Epidemiology Seminar Series

Open to the public

Speaker:

Albert Hofman, MD, PhD
Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health
and Clinical Epidemiology,
Chair, Department of Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Abstract:

It is generally agreed among epidemiologists that one of the main uses of epidemiology is to provide ‘the big picture’ in morbidity, mortality and its possible causes. John Gordon, who was the first chair of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, called epidemiology “the diagnostic discipline of mass disease”. It comes therefore as somewhat of a shock to realize that most epidemics of chronic diseases have not been “diagnosed” by epidemiologists and that these epidemics generally have been recognized first by others, and only after a long delay. I will illustrate these assertions by review of the current opioid epidemic in the US, the epidemic of obesity and related type 2 diabetes, and the lung cancer epidemic of the 20th century. Also, epidemiologists have missed the decline in incidence of major chronic diseases, in particular of coronary heart disease in the second half of the 20th century, and more recently of dementia and Alzheimer disease. In this seminar, I will examine why epidemiologists are so bad at epidemics, and what possibly may be done about this.