Consider the following statements:
"Eating red meat increases your risk of cancer!"
"Exposure to secondhand smoke is harming your children!"
It seems that every day media sources report the results of epidemiologic studies with great drama. Epidemiologic research may get exciting press, but there is a real science behind these hyperbolic headlines, with important implications for the practice of public health.
For this Discussion, find an article on epidemiology in the news that was published in the past 3 months. The article should not be from a professional source; instead, it needs to be a source accessible to and written for a lay audience. Sources can include but are not limited to online magazines, online newspapers, and health news websites. Make sure that the article represents an epidemiological study and not another type of public health study.
For your summary, briefly describe the research and discuss how this article represents an epidemiological study. Why is this an epidemiological study and not another type of health research? What have you discovered about the current practice of epidemiology from reading this article? Then, using information in the Learning Resources and other scholarly sources, discuss the connections you see between your current study and the historical development of epidemiology. How has the past informed how the current study was conducted? Include connections to at least one historical epidemiological study or figure.