It is a combination of lecture and seminar. The seminars are led by a team consisting of one physician and one nonphysician, such as epidemiologist or statistician. It uses a syllabus, textbooks, and reading of selected papers.
Evaluation is by written examination.
The overall course goals are to help the student develop skills in independent appraisal of the medical literature, become facile with the basic concepts of epidemiology, and understand the use of elementary descriptive and analytic statistics in medicine. In 1996, the problem-based learning method was formally implemented. Students, working together in small groups, have to analyze and solve a series of clinical epidemiology cases. This method fosters independent reasoning and acquisition of self-learning skills. Students working singly or in pairs select a community medicine topic and then define a specific research question germane to that topic.