This is my first blog post. I am a academic in the field of epidemiology. This means I do research and teaching focused on how diseases behave in the ‘real world’. Observing what happens in real world is really useful. Firstly, it is not always possible to investigate problems in a lab setting because of logistics or ethics. Secondly, by observing which groups of people have more or less disease we might be able work out how to control disease even before we understand the cause. Thirdly, sometimes it is important to understand when an individual is infected naturally rather than in a lab.

Most of the examples I gave are of infectious diseases and while lots of my colleagues work on these type of diseases my preference is non-infectious diseases that don’t spread. In the past I explore injuries in racehorses to help identify training approaches that would reduce injuries. Now my interests tends to be on working dogs in particular farm dogs. Through this blog I am going to share my research and musing in the area of epidemiology.