Population Health

POPH 001 | Fall 2025 | College of Health, LEHIGH | Eric Delmelle

LECTURES

August 26 & 28: Introduction to Population Health

  • Foundations of population health—what it is, how it’s measured, and what drives it. Through case studies and group work, you explore determinants, disparities, and interventions from policy to individual care.
  • GITHUB Link

August 28 & September 2: Key Population Health Concepts

  • How to compare health events across populations (by time, place, group, or event) using core epidemiologic measures.
  • Key population health concepts, and data access.
  • Students learn to describe, explain, predict, and control disparities—and apply these tools in a hands-on group exercise.
  • GITHUB Link

September 4, 11, 16 (and maybe 18): Measuring Health and Disease in Population

  • Turning raw counts of disease, births, and deaths into standardized measures so we can compare across time, place, and groups.
  • Calculating disease prevalence, incidence, crude rate, SMR, life tables, life expectancy, Preston curve
  • Population pyramids, demographic transitions
  • How population structure and aging drive health challenges and policies?
  • [GITHUB Link]

September 23: Health Indicators and Indices

  • Death certificates, health surveys, hospital records
  • Are data sources reliable?
  • Fusing data sources for better monitoring.
  • [GITHUB Link]

September 25: Advanced Epidemiological Measures

  • DALYs, QALYS
  • Sensitivity, specificity
  • How good are diagnostic tests? Are they predicting well?
  • [GITHUB Link]

September 30, October 2: Health Determinants

  • Health is shaped by genetics, environment, lifestyle, and socioeconomic/cultural factors.
  • The biopsychosocial model and life course perspective show how these determinants interact over time.
  • Pathway analysis highlights complex interactions among determinants.
  • Nonlinear dynamics (feedback loops, thresholds) can lead to unexpected health outcomes.
  • [GITHUB Link]

October 7 & 9 Health Risk Assessment and Causation

  • Core components of risk assessment: hazard identification, dose–response, exposure, and risk characterization.
  • Life course epidemiology links exposures across the lifespan to health risks.
  • Causation frameworks: Hume, Mill, Koch, Bradford Hill criteria.
  • Risk models use measures of association (e.g., odds ratios) to integrate causation.
  • [GITHUB Link]

October 16, 21: Designing Population Health Studies

  • Study designs (RCT, case-control, cross-sectional, lon gitudinal incl. cohort…)
  • Ethical concerns (vaccine).
  • Validity, reliability, errors, bias and confounding.
  • [GITHUB Link]

October 21, 23: Planning Population Interventions

  • Types and levels of interven tions.
  • Criteria for screening.
  • Behavioral models for health promotion.
  • Cross-cultural issues & Case studies.
  • [GITHUB Link]

November 6: Evaluating Health Programs

  • Framework for evaluations and evaluation methods
  • Economic appraisal and case studies
  • [GITHUB Link]

November 11 & 18: Infectious diseases

  • Transmission routes, host, vector
  • Compartmental models: SIR
  • Visualizing outbreaks
  • Applied case studies
  • [GITHUB Link]

November 18: Cartography and Population Health

  • Visualizing Health Data on Maps
  • Challenges of Small Numbers and Rare Events
  • Spatial Patterns, Clusters, and Ecological Fallacy
  • [GITHUB Link]

November 20: AI in Population Health

  • Predicting Health Risks
  • AI and Social Determinants of Health
  • Evaluating and Targeting Interventions
  • Ethical Challenges of AI in Pop. Health
  • [GITHUB Link]

delmelle@gmail.com