The Community as an Epidemiologic Laboratory: A Casebook of Community Studies

The case method has long been accepted as an effective teaching technique. Legal education consists mainly of case teaching from the courtroom and the textbook. Bedside teaching is the cornerstone of clinical training in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. Social casework has used this technique effectively, and more recently it has been adopted in medical care teaching. The United States Public Health Service published a series of case studies for use in medical care teaching,1 and this method has been used by Penchansky as a teaching device in health services administration.2 The community as a case study in medical sociology is illustrated by Paul's work in 1955.3 In THE COMMUNITY AS AN EPIDEMIOLOGIC LABORATORY, Irving I. Kessler and Morton L. Levin have edited a book that attempts to apply the case study method, long a favored teaching technique in epidemiology, to a varied group of studies that originated in communities. The result is an uneven but instructive volume that deals more effectively with epidemiology and methodology than with the relation between research studies and communities.