Macroepidemiology
MIT OpenCourseWare's Macroepidemiology examines major causes of death in the United States since 1900, including cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, and infectious disease. Students build analytical models to estimate historical shifts in population risk factors and physiological rate parameters, and analyze familial data to separate inherited from environmental risk. The course also covers basic population genetics of dominant, recessive, and non-deleterious inherited risk factors. Materials come from MIT's Biological Engineering department and include the full set of course readings, problem sets, and lecture materials as published on OCW, free to access under MIT's open license with no certificate offered. The approach is quantitative, treating disease trends as data to be modeled rather than narrated, suited to students comfortable with statistics and genetics fundamentals.