Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:Introduction to Health Care and Public Health in the U.S.
Unit:Introduction and History of Modern Health Care in the U.S.
Lecture:How Public Health has Improved Health Care
Slide content:How Has Public Health Improved Health Care? - 3 Improvements in data collection have led to the use of better scientific methods to collect data and carry out experiments Field surveys Cohort studies Randomized controlled trials 10
Slide notes:Public health has also led to improvements in health care resulting from improvements in data collection and methods to carry out experiments. An example of this would be field surveys. In this type of research, data about individuals is collected in the field. Progressive improvements in methodology have led to the use of improved scientific research designs . Cohort studies are one example. This is a form of a longitudinal study that follows two or more sets of patients. One set has the characteristic that is being considered, the other does not have the characteristic. Randomized controlled trials, or RTCs, represent another improved scientific research design. RCTs reduce sampling bias in scientific studies. Patients who are otherwise identical are assigned to one of two groups. The experimental group receives an intervention, and the control group does not. This reduces the influence of confounding variables in data analysis. 10