Glossary
Epidemiologist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential epidemiologist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key epidemiologist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in epidemiologist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Case definition
- Criteria for a case.
- Case-control study
- Compares cases to controls.
- Cohort study
- Follows groups over time.
- Contact tracing
- Finding exposed people.
- Epi curve
- Cases over time chart.
- Herd immunity
- Community protection.
- Incidence
- New cases over time.
- MPH
- Master of Public Health.
- Notifiable disease
- Must be reported.
- Odds ratio
- Odds comparison.
- Outbreak
- More cases than expected.
- Prevalence
- Total cases at a time.
- Relative risk
- Risk ratio.
- Risk factor
- Raises chance of disease.
- Surveillance
- Ongoing tracking.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Epidemiologist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Epidemiologist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.