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• Purvis Hall
• 1020 Pine Avenue West
• Montreal QC H3A 1A2
• Telephone: 514-398-6258
• Website: www.mcgill.ca/epi-biostat-occh

This Department contributes to the multidisciplinary curriculum components of Fundamentals of Medicine and Dentistry (FMD), Transition to Clinical Practice (TCP), and Clerkship components of the M.D.,C.M. program. In addition, see the Elective Program.

Lectures and small group tutorials cover basic principles of epidemiology and biostatistics as applied in clinical and community settings. Included are research design and methods, dealing with bias and confounding, screening and risk appraisal, statistics, and critical appraisal of the literature.

Elective rotations are available to medical students at the Montreal public health department under the supervision of Public Health and Preventive Medicine specialists and family physicians. In general, rotations are built around a core of health protection in communicable diseases or environmental health, including exposure to on-call duties, health surveillance activities, and epidemiological investigations. Interested students may also choose to explore activities in disease prevention or health promotion, depending on their particular interests.

The McGill residency program in Public Health and Preventive Medicine trains specialists to identify health problems in populations; to plan, implement, and evaluate programs to promote health and control disease; and to apply this knowledge to community-oriented clinical practice. The practice of public health and preventive medicine requires the development of knowledge in several academic fields (epidemiology, statistics, administration, and economics) and skills in different fields of practice such as public health surveillance, clinical preventive medicine, health care policy, health services organization, health promotion, prevention and control of infectious diseases, and occupational and environmental health.

For more information, please consult the Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health website.

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health and disease. It is a basic science to clinical medicine, public health, and health services research. Our graduate programs have been offered since the 1960s and are known for their strong quantitative and methodological content, as applied to a variety of health areas. We offer education and research training in the etiology, management and prevention of diseases, and the promotion of health. Areas of strength include:

• biostatistics;
• clinical and public health informatics;
• environmental and occupational health;
• health care delivery and organization;
• infectious diseases;
• pharmacoepidemiology;
• population and public health;
• social epidemiology;
• epidemiologic methods;
• chronic diseases;
• reproductive and perinatal epidemiology;
• global health;
• causal inference;
• and many cross­disciplinary activities.

The Department offers three degree programs of study in Epidemiology: M.Sc.(Thesis), M.Sc.(Non-Thesis), and Ph.D. See the Faculty of Medicine's Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies section for descriptions of courses and programs.

Biostatistics is the study of statistics and statistical methods with application to the biomedical environment. The department has one of the largest concentrations of Ph.D. statisticians in any Canadian medical school. They receive funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from other federal and provincial agencies that fund research in the quantitative and health sciences. The research focus of faculty members is on the development of new statistical methods for the collection and analysis of clinical and epidemiologic research data. The Department offers three programs in Biostatistics: M.Sc.(Thesis), M.Sc.(Non-Thesis), and Ph.D. See the Faculty of Medicine's Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies section for descriptions of courses and programs.

The mission of the Master of Science in Public Health is to train outstanding public and population health professionals and future leaders by offering a rigorous academic program in methods, research, and practice. Students will study the foundations and principles of epidemiology and biostatistics, as applied to public health research and practice, in order to design, conduct, and analyze population-based, environmental, clinical, policy, and methodological public health-related research. See the Faculty of Medicine's Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies section for descriptions of courses and programs.

McGill is known for its pioneering research in occupational hazards associated with agents such as respirable dust, chemical hazards, and radiation. The M.Sc. (Applied) and Ph.D. programs in Occupational Health are multidisciplinary and involve engineering, chemistry, ergonomics, epidemiology, and occupational health. The applied programs educate practitioners in occupational health and safety and in industrial hygiene who will be capable of evaluating the work environment and its hazards and of proposing appropriate methods of prevention and control. A part-time "distance education" option is a particularly attractive feature of the Master’s program, for practitioners already working in the field who wish to enhance their theoretical and practical knowledge base. The research programs train independent researchers in the field of occupational health and safety, and workplace environmental sciences. Note: We are not accepting applications for the Occupational Health Ph.D. or the M.Sc.A.(Distance) programs until further notice. See the Faculty of Medicine's Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies section for descriptions of courses and programs.