This is a mandatory first year course for Kin students. The course generally gets mixed reviews; some people love it and some people greatly dislike it. I personally loved it and it ended up being my favorite course in first year.
For those of you who have no idea what epidemiology is, do not fret. Most of us had no idea what it was either when we showed up on the first day of class. Here goes: epidemiology is the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations. Throughout the term, we were introduced to several of the major health studies conducted in the field. These studies will come up time and time again throughout your four years in Kin. The main focus of the course is to develop the relationship between physical activity, health and disease. To develop this relationship we looked at the incidence of several chronic diseases prevalent in our society such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, etc.
The course outline is as follows:
Term Test 1 –20%
Term Test 2 –20%
Term Test 3 –20%
Final Exam- 40%
Dr. Howarth is by far my favorite professor at McMaster. She genuinely cares about her students and wants to see them do well. She is funny and teaches in a way that simplifies topics to make sure everyone understands. However, her tests can be tricky. Make sure you read the questions very carefully because one word can change everything. One reason some people did not like the course was because there are a lot of statistics to remember (e.g., what is the percent of adults that smoke in Canada?) for each test. If you do not remember numbers easily, do not worry, the majority of the tests are theory based.
Overall, the course is a very interesting one and is an excellent introduction to further topics you will develop in upper years of Kin. For those of you interested, the course outline for last year’s (2011-2012) course can be found in the link below.
http://www.science.mcmaster. ca/kin...se_Outline.pdf
