Helen Ward is Professor of Public Health at Imperial College London and an Honorary Consultant in the Clinical Directorate of Public Health and Primary Care in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. She is Director of Education for the School of Public Health and has extensive experience teaching epidemiology, public and global health to medical students and health professionals. She leads a research group working on the epidemiology and control of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and directs Imperial's Centre for Patient Experience Research.

Dr Mireille Toledano is a senior lecturer in epidemiology at Imperial College London and an investigator of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health specialising in environmental epidemiology and exposure assessment. She is currently a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, following successful completion of a postgraduate certificate in higher education at Imperial College London.

Paul Elliott is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine at Imperial College London and an Honorary Consultant in the Clinical Directorate of Public Health and Primary Care in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is also the Director of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health which coordinates a major programme of scientific research and postgraduate training in the health effects of environmental pollutants. He has particular interests in clinical biobanks and molecular epidemiology.

Gavin Shaddick is Reader in statistics at the Department of Mathematical Sciences at University of Bath. He has previously held positions as a lecturer and senior lecturer at the University of Bath, a research assistant at the Department of Epidemiology at Imperial College, London, and a research assistant and fellow at the Environmental Epidemiology Unit, London, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Bethan Davies studied Medicine at Cambridge University and is training in Public Health. She is currently working as a Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

Highly Commended in the Basis of Medicine Category, BMA Book Awards 2013

• Section 1: Epidemiology in the clinic


• 1: The diagnostic process


• 2: Management decisions


• 3: Risk communication and promoting health


• Section 2: Evidence-based practice


• 4: Finding and summarizing evidence


• 5: Preventive medicine and screening


• 6: Evaluating clinical practice


• Section 3: Epidemiological methods


• 7: Types of study


• 8: Sources of data


• 9: Statistical concepts


• 10: Statistical techniques in clinical medicine


• Section 4: Epidemiology of common diseases


• 11: Global burden of disease


• 12: Epidemiology of diseases