Cancelled Occupational Epidemiology

This specialized course examines the application of epidemiologic methods to occupational health problems.

The course starts with a brief introduction to the organization of the Danish labor market and the historical background of the labor movement in Denmark. Students must be familiar with the broader labor policy context for occupational health, which is relevant for designing and conducting occupational epidemiologic research studies in Denmark.

The body of the course covers occupational exposures that include the psychosocial working environment, working hours, ergonomic exposures, inhalational exposures, chemical exposures, and atypical employment. These occupational exposures are discussed in relation to major public health challenges, including e.g. depression, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory diseases, birth and reproductive outcomes, accidents, and cancer. In addition, the course addresses potentially vulnerable groups within the labor market such as young people, seniors, pregnant women, immigrants, and employees with chronic illness. Furthermore, an international perspective will be added with examples from extreme working conditions occurring in non-Western countries.

To draw a clear line toward research methods in epidemiology, the major study designs (SMR, cohort, case-control, cross-sectional in population and industrial settings) will be reviewed in the context of the occupational health problems. The course will also integrate critical assessment of methods used in occupational health research, dealing with issues of measurement error, unmeasured confounding by behavioral risk factors, selection bias including the “healthy worker effect”, effect modification and joint effects (including gene-environment interactions). Lastly, the course will also provide examples of advanced epidemiological and statistical methods applied in occupational epidemiologic research that stregthen causal interpretation and quantification of the exposure-response relationship.

The course schedule will also include a module outside of the University of Copenhagen at the NFA, formerly known as the National Research Centre for the Working Environment, where occupational epidemiologic research takes place in Denmark at the ministerial level.

The course consists of lectures and seminars with an emphasis on student participation and interactions between lecturers and students. Students are expected to actively contribute to group discussions. Furthermore, in groups all students are expected to prepare a presentation of a research paper from the course curriculum.