Epidemiology The practice
Epidemiological studies are aimed, where possible, at revealing unbiased relationships between exposures such as alcohol or smoking, biological agents, stress, or chemicals to mortality or morbidity. The identification of causal relationships between these exposures and outcomes is an important aspect of epidemiology. Epidemiologists use informatics as a tool. The term 'epidemiologic triad' means the intersection of 'Host', 'Agent', and 'Environment' in analyzing an outbreak. Epidemiologists use the key term inference and gather data, a broad range of biomedical and psychosocial theories biology, sociology, mathematics, statistics, anthropology, psychology, and policy in an iterative way to generate or expand theory, to test hypotheses, and to make educated, informed assertions about which relationships are causal, and about exactly how they are causal. Since 1965 they use Bradford-Hill criteria for assessing evidence of causation.