HEL611 Nutritional Epidemiology
- ECTS Credits:
- 5
- Responsible department:
- Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences
- Course Leader:
- Anine Christine Medin
- Lecture Semester:
- Spring
- Teaching language:
- English
- Duration:
- 1 term
The course is connected to the following study programs
Teaching language
EnglishRecommended prerequisites
-
EX-602 Philosophy of Science
-
ME-617 Systematic Literature Analysis
-
ME-618 Qualitative research methods
-
ME-619 Quantitative Research Methods and Regression Analysis
Course contents
This course aims to describe the complicated relation between diet and risk of common non-communicable diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. The specific contributions of nutritional epidemiology include dietary assessment, description of nutritional exposure and statistical modelling of the diet-disease relationship. Diet is difficult to measure and understanding how to interpret data from different dietary assessment methods is crucial for evaluation of the relationship between diet and health.
To reach the aim described above, the content of the course will be the following contexts and topics:
-
Overview of nutritional epidemiology including study designs
-
Foods and nutrients and the nature of variation in diet
-
Dietary assessment methods
-
Reproducibility and validity in nutritional assessment
-
Biochemical and anthropometric measures as indicators of diet
-
Correction for the effects of measurement error
-
Issues in analysis and presentation of dietary data
-
Nutrition monitoring and policy applications
-
Nutritional epidemiology and ethics
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the course, the candidate:
Knowledge
-
will have insight in nutritional epidemiology including different study designs
-
will have in-depth knowledge of variation of diet and how that influences nutritional epidemiology
-
will have in-depth knowledge in dietary assessment methods and biochemical and anthropometric methods as indicators of dietary intake, and will be able to reflect upon their strengths and limitations
-
will have in-depth knowledge of how to analyze and interpret relationships between diet and health.
-
will have insight and understanding of how dietary recommendations are developed and implemented into public health nutrition policy
Skills
-
can formulate research questions and plan research in the field of nutritional epidemiology
-
can critically analyze, evaluate data and interpret results within nutritional epidemiology
General competence
-
can communicate diet and health relationship through national and international channels, and participate in debates in relevant fora
-
can identify ethical issues and carry out his/her research with scholarly integrity
Examination requirements
The course days, group work, presentations and essay are obligatory.
Teaching methods
This course unit will be taught over 5 days course program and an exam. The teaching and learning methods will consist of a combination of lectures, group work, statistical analyses and presentations based on the lecture topics and the candidates¿ own ongoing research work.
Assessment methods and criteria
The final assignment is a two-weeks exam based on the course topics. The exam will be graded as pass or fail.