NURS8310: Week 2 – Assignment

Week 2: Descriptive Epidemiology and Data Sources for Population Health 

In 2016, the Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made policy recommendations related to e-cigarettes intended to curb their use by minors, including: (a) incorporating them under current clean indoor air policies, (b) requiring sellers to be licensed, (c) restricting marketing, and (d) increasing educational initiatives (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). In the intervening years, policies have become more restrictive. For instance, in 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented a policy to ban all flavors of e-cigarettes except tobacco or menthol (FDA, 2020). As of 2021, all 50 states prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors (CDC, 2021). What investigations led to these recommendations? How did these public health entities determine the use of e-cigarettes by minors? 

Week 1 presented foundational concepts of epidemiology and described how epidemiology is used to improve population health. Building on that information, this week, you will be introduced to descriptive epidemiologic research studies. You will examine the purposes of descriptive epidemiology, which provides a picture of the distribution of disease in terms of person, place, and time. You will also look at sources of health data that can be useful for this type 

of research. By understanding the descriptive characteristics of diseases, nurses and healthcare providers can develop 

hypotheses related to diseases. They can then address these further by using analytic epidemiologic study techniques, 

which will be discussed in subsequent weeks. 

Learning Resources

Required Readings (click to expand/reduce)
Curley, A. L. C. (Ed.). (2020). Population-based nursing: Concepts and competencies
for advanced practice (3rd ed.). Springer.
● Chapter 6, “Using Information Technology to Improve Population Outcomes”
Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2021). Epidemiology for public health practice (6th ed.).
Jones & Bartlett.
● Chapter 4, “Descriptive Epidemiology: Person, Place, Time”
● Chapter 5, “Sources of Data for Use in Epidemiology”
National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine. (2019). Finding and using
health statistics . https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/stats_tutorial/cover.html
Secondary Data Sources
Use the following resources to locate secondary data sources for this week’s
Assignment:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Data.CDC.gov: Home .
https://data.cdc.gov/
National Center for Health Statistics. (2015). Resources for researchers.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nchs_for_you/researchers.htm
Walden University Office of Research and Doctoral Services. (n.d.). Explore existing
datasets . https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/research-center/student-research/data-
sources
World Health Organization. (2021). WHO Data collections [Data sets].
https://www.who.int/data/collections
Required Media (click to expand/reduce)
Secondary Data Sources for Population Health
Time Estimate: 2 minutes