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Our understanding of the causes of disease and attempts to reduce it's impact generally evolves over time. Successive research studies answer research questions that were not answered previously.

This slide illustrates how epidemiologic knowledge progresses through repeated and successive studies of the same outcome. These studies take advantage of the temporal nature of the cause-effect relation (ie. Causes precede Effects). As one moves from left to right on the x-axis, our knowledge about the causes for a disease or injury increases. This is true for injuries from falls in the elderly, as it is for heart disease, or our study of diabetes.