Includes bibliographical references and index.

Epidemiology is ... -- How long is a piece of string? : measuring disease frequency -- Who, what, where and when? : descriptive epidemiology -- Healthy research : study designs for public health -- Why? : linking exposure and disease -- Heads or tails : the role of chance -- All that glitters is not gold : the problem of error -- Muddied waters : the challenge of confounding -- Reading between the lines : reading and writing epidemiological papers -- Who sank the boat? : association and causation -- Assembling the building blocks : reviews and their uses -- Surveillance : collecting health-related data for epidemiological intelligence and public health action / Martyn Kirk and Adrian Sleigh -- Outbreaks, epidemics, and clusters / Martyn Kirk and Adrian Sleigh -- Prevention : better than cure? -- Early detection : what benefits at what cost? -- Epidemiology and the publicʹs health.