Learning How to Investigate Diseases
Why Associate Professor Jim Scott’s epidemiology class is always full
The Covid-19 pandemic. Outbreaks of West Nile virus and avian influenza. A resurgence of the deadly Marburg virus.
No doubt, there have been an overwhelming number of reminders these last few years showing why epidemiology is a critical field. The branch of medicine concerned with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health, epidemiology has real-world impacts, and Associate Professor of Statistics Jim Scott wants to ensure Colby students know about them.
Scott learned about epidemiology after he graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., then went on to earn a master’s degree in public health at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked for several years for the California Department of Public Health in the state’s tuberculosis control branch.
During that time, he learned how tracing disease outbreaks combines investigative work with science and statistics.
Scott returned to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in epidemiology and a master’s degree in biostatistics, also at the University of California, Berkeley. He presumed he was destined for employment with a biotech firm. He pivoted and became a professor instead.
He’s been at the College since 2009 and, most years, has taught Topics in Epidemiology, which combines statistics, biology, history, and more in a rigorous introduction to the cornerstone public health practice. It’s the kind of in-depth course that’s much more likely to be found in a graduate program than a liberal arts college, and students vie to enroll.
Scott believes the popularity of the course may reflect rising interest in public health in the United States and that students are able to take a close look at the fascinating, always-relevant science of public health.
This interview has been edited.
How did you first become interested in epidemiology, and what was your career trajectory?
I graduated from college as a math major with a concentration in statistics, and I was a computer programmer out of college. I knew I didn’t want to do that [long term]. And I discovered this book, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, by Laurie Garrett. Once I read it, I thought this is what I want to do. It was public health, epidemiology, and the perfect mixture of math, science, and statistics. And it was something that I thought was important.
What is something you learned from your work in the California Department of Public Health?
A lot of people may not know this, but tuberculosis is not a disease that we’ve eliminated. Smallpox is the only disease that we’ve eliminated. Worldwide, tuberculosis still kills more than a million people a year. About one-quarter of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis. It’s just that your body does a remarkably good job of keeping it in check if you’ve ever been infected. It’s not common to be infected in the United States, but the real danger is that you have about a 5 percent chance, if you don’t do anything, of that infection developing into a full-blown disease.
Why do you enjoy teaching epidemiology to college students?
I think that for this audience, liberal arts college students in particular, public health is something that resonates. A lot of students want to do something that’s contributing to the betterment of society. Public health is a huge umbrella, and it doesn’t matter what your major is, there’s a place for you there. You could be an English major, you could be an economist, you could be a math major, you could be a computer scientist, we need people in public health. Epidemiology is really the hallmark science of public health.
For me, introducing students to this field of epidemiology and public health is really important. Maybe, in a small way, you help them figure out something that is meaningful. I care a lot about that.
“A lot of students want to do something that’s contributing to the betterment of society. Public health is a huge umbrella, and it doesn’t matter what your major is, there’s a place for you there.”
Jim Scott, Associate Professor of Statistics
What do you think makes the course special?
The course that I teach now is modeled after what you would take as a graduate student in a first-year epidemiology course, except it’s infused with a lot more statistics because we teach it in the Statistics Department. It’s really an introduction to epidemiological methods.
I think sometimes courses get labeled as epidemiology and they’re just talking about disease, or historical context, or pandemics, or outbreaks. This is very much the science of epidemiology. We learn about the metrics that are used, how studies are designed, how data are collected. It really is the nuts and bolts. We talk about history for sure. I mean, that’s an important part of it.
But the course is very much asking, how do you design a study to answer this research question? And then, once you have the data, how do you analyze it appropriately, and what types of conclusions can you make based on this type of study design? And what are the best practices when you’re doing epidemiological research?
What is it like teaching this course during actual global epidemiological events like the Covid-19 pandemic? It seems like that would lend some urgency to the topic.
It’s constant and always present. When I first started teaching this course, there was H1N1. There was a big fear that there was going to be another flu pandemic. I was teaching at St. Olaf College [in Minnesota] at the time, and I remember they were preparing for what to do if bird flu became a pandemic. The thing about public health is that you might prepare for something that never comes to pass, but you’re building a framework that will benefit you in the future. When inevitably there is something new that hits, you’re well poised to deal with it.
One of the things we do in class that students really like is every Friday, we have epidemiology in the news. Two or three students volunteer to present about what’s happening. I stole that idea from one of my professors in grad school, and it always sparks. We’ve had whole classes get torpedoed because we’re talking about something important. There’s interest, and debates among the students, and I think it’s worth it. That usually happens at least once a semester. The students see the relevance of what they’re learning about.
