The emergence of epidemiology in the genomics age.

While observational epidemiology is considered to be the scientific foundation of public health2 it is often viewed as a ‘soft science’ limited by an inherent inability to fully control for confounding, misclassification, and selection bias.3 Enter the ‘genomics era’.4,5 With the completion of the Human Genome Project, and the eventual identification of thousands of human genetic variants, scientists are predicting that the use of personalized genomic information will revolutionize the future practice of medicine6 and public health.7 In this paper, we discuss the emerging role of epidemiology in the genomics era. In particular, we show how synergistic interaction between genomics and epidemiology is not only mutually beneficial but crucial to the optimal development of each field in the 21st century. Our thesis is twofold:

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