Area Manager: Jesús Ibarluzea Maurolagoitia, Ph.D.

Dept. Health – Sub-directorate of Public Health of Gipuzkoa

The research activity of this Area is essentially focussed on the following thematic lines:

  • Clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine.
  • Cancer epidemiology and chronic diseases.
  • Epidemiological surveillance of prevalent and infectious diseases.
  • Nutritional epidemiology.
  • Environmental epidemiology: social, psychosocial, environmental factors and their impact on neuropsychological and physical development in infancy and adolescence.
  • Analysis of health impact arising from facilities with environmental impact.
  • Research in Primary Care.
  • Economic assessment of chronic diseases.
  • Research in Health Services.

The research developed is intended to:

Promote epidemiological, clinical and health services research at both community and hospital level, boost translational research, with a view to transferring knowledge to decision making in Public Health, and to the care practice, and incorporate the advances to the modification of the contextual and individual determinants of health. Identify etiological and phenotypic determinants in the appearance and development of pathological processes and conditions and, lastly, to be a reference in quality research in public health and epidemiology.

The five Research Groups have proven experience in the design and carrying out of epidemiological studies on different risk factors and pathologies, clinical and economic studies: cohort and case-control studies, population surveys, controlled clinical trials, and simulation models. To proceed, the information sources used are the specific epidemiological studies, the population surveys, the clinical surveys and the Osakidetza administrative and clinical databases.

Research in this Area requires the integration of individual clinical experience, understood as the skill acquired during clinical training and practice, with the best clinical and biological evidence, and with the study of interaction with environmental factors.

The guidelines for collective, community and individual action, both referring to prevention and treatment, constitute the basic objective which sustains action in Public Health, research in health services and Primary Care.