Hi all, welcome to module three.
This week, we're going to talk about
disease screening techniques, which are any number
of things that help you diagnose disease.
Disease screening may already be familiar to you,
such as the use of blood tests
for glucose levels to diagnose diabetes
or colonoscopies for colorectal cancer or genetic tests
for diseases such as Alzheimer's or cystic fibrosis.
Screening tests are all over
and are one of the most effective preventive strategies,
so it's really important in public health
for us to have good screening where we can.
What you are going to learn about in the readings
and lecture this week are various measures we use
to look at the effectiveness of our screening tests.
If you've taken biostats already,
some of these may already be familiar to you.
We'll go into a bit more depth here,
looking at advanced screening strategies
such as sequential and simultaneous testing.
These are really useful in public health
because we're always trying to look for a balance
between getting good information that we can use
as public health experts in order to prevent disease
and improve the health of our communities,
but also balancing that with the burden of testing
on patients as well as the burden of anxiety
due to the lack of effectiveness
or accuracy in our screening tests.
I hope you enjoy this material
and can see that balance of work.
If you have any questions,
please don't hesitate to let me know.
I'll see you next week.