Editorial - Clinical Epidemiology

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Author: Henrik Toft Sørensen

Published Date February 2009 Volume 2009:1 Pages 17 - 18

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/CLEP.S5309

Henrik Toft Sørensen

Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark; Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

Clinical Epidemiology – a fast new way to publish important research

When starting a new journal, Clinical Epidemiology, it is important to define some key concepts, our mission, and to delineate our discipline.

The classic concept of epidemiology is an old discipline with centuries-old roots. It is a discipline of central importance for public health and its impact for clinical medicine has increased over the last few decades. Epidemiology can thus be broadly divided into population and clinical epidemiology. Population epidemiology deals with the variation in disease occurrence and reasons for this variation. The description of the variation is the subject of descriptive epidemiology and the study of the causes or correlates of this variation is the subject of analytical epidemiology. Population epidemiology is a core tool for disease prevention and is central to public health.