New challenges of epidemiology in political and social contexts. From public health service to prevention policies

Abstract

This contribution is addressed to provide a large spectrum overview on how the evolution of biomedical information has brought unavoidably about a change of tools and modes of analysis both from the epidemiology and public health service point of view. In order to face the challenges connected to the change of population dynamics, to the large migration fluxes, the change of ageing dynamics and the very rapid evolution of medicine towards «precision medicine», it is necessary that the social-organizational response of social and health system adapts itself to the ongoing changes and new needs. In this article we will show how, moving from an individual perspective to the one of a population typical of epidemiology, a lot of paradigms connected to data also change and this positions us in a «global system» model type where the integration of different sources of information and prevention interventions become unavoidable.