i want to know more about epidemiologist ?

Question

is it a fun feild? how can u get into it ? wht classes u have to take in order to get into it? well its my last year in high school and i am trying to get into something in medical and i was confused abt it until i read something on a diease so i was thinking tht i am always inerested in researching new things and thts wht an epidemiologist does and well this is really new to me so was wondering wht more do i need to know for the future reference??? thanks in advance :P

Answer 1

I wouldn't call it "fun" but the people who do it are serious scientists who are very dedicated.

Epidemiologists are usually MDs, but they also might be PhDs. In any case they have several years of education beyond the normal 4 year college BS or BA. They need to be very good in biology - usually they would have majored in some field of biology in college. Also, they need to be very good in statistics because they need to constantly be studying and researching about the numbers of people who have various diseases.

They also need to have a little bit of detective in their personality, since they often have to try to track down the sources of epidemics of diseases.

If you go to a good college and major in biology or microbiology you should be able to learn about careers in this area.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I think this would be a very exciting field of study for you if you like scientific inquiry and have a creative mind. You'll need to do a pre-med curricula in college, including (micro) biology, chemistry, statistics and physics. If you can take an AP Bio course before you finish H.S. all the better.

Try to contact professionals in the field to get the real scoop. Besides universities, they work in public health departments and privately sponsored medical research institutions.

Answer 3

Hi there, I'm an epidemiologist. I specialise in infectious diseases. Most of us are NOT physicians (though many of us aspired to be at some point), and most of us work in relative obscurity.

Do I enjoy my job? Yes. Immensely so. I'm at work right now writing this from a dim cubicle at the health department.

How did I get here? I didn't get into medical school right away, so I chose to enter graduate school instead. To become an epidemiologist, you usually need to earn a masters degree either in science, nursing or public health. I chose public health. Only in some circumstances could you be hired as a n epidemiologist without a masters degree, but it usually requires at least two years work experience doing biostatistics.

Epidemiology students study a wide variety of topics, but the real core is in biostatistics and epidemiology. We also take specialized classes in epidemiology such as chronic disease epi, infectious disease epi, research methods, clinical trials and advance statistics.

What do I do? I track cases of certain diseases. Right now, I work on assorted parasitic infections, foodborne illnesses, toxoplasmosis and seafood poisonings. I have also handled bioterrorism diseases, zoonotic diseases and Listeria infections in the past. A lot of what I do is receive reports from hospitals, tally them and collect patient data from hospital records and patient interviews. Then I write reports summarizing my findings. If I was a little more ambitions and a little less busy with the day to day, I could initiate and run my own research project using the data we have collected over the years.

But the coolest part of my job is outbreak investigation. Every now and then we locate clusters of illness, and we launch investigations into the sources. The last outbreak I worked on was a group of restaurant complaints from separate households for one restaurant on a particular day. Even in a city as big as mine, this is a rare occurence. Remarkable coincidence? I think not! We sent the restaurant inspectors to check the place out. We interviewed staff. We interviewed all the patrons from the complaints and took down lists of the items they ate. Turns out, people who ate things containing lettuce were likely to be sick, and judging from their symptoms and onset, it looked like viral gastroenteritis. Mystery solved.

Epidemiology has a pretty wide scope. You could do what I do and work for the health department. You could also work for a big research hospital and study cancer, HIV and diabetes (among millions of other things!). If you want to make money, the $$$ is in clinical trials. The big pharmaceutical companies pay the best (but they drain your soul).

If you want to read about epidemiologists at work, check out 'The Hot Zone.' It a great book, and it inspired me to consider epidemiology as a career way back when I was 13.

As for education, you're still in HS, but you can apply for internships at your local health department. Do well in HS, then go to college. You can study anything in college and become an epidemiologist. As far as I know, there aren't any pre-requisite courses for epidemiology programs). Many of us were biology majors, but I have many colleagues who studied nursing, English Lit, sociology, anthropology, journalism, political science and ethnic studies (among other things).

And you might want to consider dual degrees, too. A lot of medical schools offer MD/MPH programs. A dear friend of mine was a pharmacy student and did the PharmD/MPH degree program.

I'm glad to see that you're interested in the field.