Research Methods IV

Objectives

The course has as general educational objective to allow the students, in an initial phase of their preparation, to contact with environmental health, and decisive behavioural and biological factors of disease and with the organization of Healthcare in order to recognize their significance, and trying to motivate them for the communitarian aspects that are beneath its origin and also for the communitarian consequences.
Knowing that the Investigation constitutes the base to get indispensable information to all and any valid action, the students will be trained in the basic methodological principles, as well as on the importance of investigation ethics. The innumerable problems of social medicine are under the responsibility of some specific institutions that the students will have to visit and to register how much they contribute to the community Health and their forms of intervention. The social approach of Medicine is determinant for the prevention and promotion of health

Program

Forms of acting in Medicine:
Quality of the health of the populations:
Civilization Level

Sanitary level
History of the health
Community health:
Demographic revolution
Industrial development
Economical repercussions
Repercussions in the health of the communities
Social problems
Promotion of community health
Notion of public health
Fields of health (concept):Human Biology
Environment
Behaviours
Organization of healthcare
Models of community health
Human Biology-limited action
Environmental intervention-health protection
Intervention on life styles-health promotion
Intervention on systems of healthcare-Services of preventive medicine
History of the community health
Screening
Types of Screening
Dangers of application of Screening
Characteristics of Screening Tests
Indications
Dangers of application of Screening
Systems of Healthcare
Occupational Health
Importance and history
Main types of occupa

Teaching Methodologies

Theoretical lessons.
Assessment:
Exam:100%

Bibliography

• Notas epidemiológicas - Salvador Massano Cardoso - Faculdade de Medicina - Coimbra, 2005.
• Sistemas de Saúde - Gonçalves Ferreira (Fundação Caloust Gulbenkian).
• Community Health - Green and Anderson (Times Mirror/Mosby - STo Louis, 1986)
• Survey Methods in Community Medicine - J.H. Abramson (Churchil Livingston - Edinbourgh).