#EpiTwitter #MedTwitter this is a huge problem in public health. the underlying principles of public health are necessarily different from medicine. public health focuses on the population, and medicine focuses on the individual 1/ https://twitter.com/phscientist/status/1312050654052061185
These are totally different perspectives that don’t necessarily translate easily. In fact they are often at odds with each other. Medical school is great at teaching us about how to obtain a story and examine one patient at a time. 2/
But med school doesn’t teach us about public health principles or methodology. The goal of teaching epidemiology is often to give students just enough to critically analyze the literature. But even this is flawed. 3/
Instead of thinking about public health or epidemiology as a means to an end, as a set of tools to “do research” I urge #MedTwitter to think about public health as a different perspective on how to view health. 4/
Learning some epi and biostats to do “clinical research” is not the same as learning how to practice public health and conduct rigorous public health research. This is also why I feel validated in my training as an MD/PhD in epidemiology. 5/
I’m often told that my research will be more “translational” bc I work w/ human data. And that’s not true. I study population health; answering research questions that will serve clinical practice is challenging when contextual risk factors are controlled by policy or society. 6/
If you’re a clinician who wants to study or practice public health, I think that’s wonderful and we need more of you. I ask you to truly consider public health as a different lens through which we view health, and I promise you’ll realize how different the approach is. 7/
If you’re a public health organization and you value MDs more than other specialists I urge you to consider the same. How medicine traditionally teaches us to treat patients individually. I love this one-on-one relationship w/ patients. But it’s not the same as public health 8/8
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