Public Health Terms
The ability of a public health measure to produce benefits among those who are offered said public health measure.
What is effectiveness?
An epidemic affecting the population of an extensive region, country, or continent.
A person in a population who has been identified as having a particular disease, disorder, injury, or condition.
What is a case?
Contains, spreads, or harbors an infectious organism.
What is a carrier?
What is an incubatory carrier?
A behavior, environment exposure, or inherent human characteristic that is associated with an important health condition.
What is risk factor?
The occurrence of cases of an illness specific, health-related behavior, or other health-related events clearly in excess of normal expectancy in a community or region.
What is epidemic?
An individual (or group of individuals) who has all of the signs and symptoms of the symptoms connected to a suspected pathogen.
What is a suspect case?
A nonliving intermediary such as a fomite, food, or water that conveys the infectious agent from its reservoir to a susceptible host.
What is a vehicle?
An individual who harbors a pathogen and who, although in the recovery phase of the course of the disease, is still infectious.
What is a convalescent carrier?
The ability of a public health measure to produce a desire effect among those who participate in the public health measure compared with those who do not.
What is efficacy?
Refers to the ongoing, usual, or constant presence of a disease in a community or among a group of people.
What is endemic?
Persons who become infected and ill after a disease has been introduced into a population and who become infected from contact with the primary case.
What is a secondary case?
The habitat in or on which an infectious agent lives, grows, multiplies, and on which it depends for its survival in nature.
What is a reservoir?
Individual who has been exposed to and harbors a disease-causing pathogen and who has done so for some time, even though the person may have recovered from the disease.
What is an active carrier?
Involves finding and quantifying associations, testing hypotheses, and identifying causes of health-related states or events.
What is analytic epidemiology?
An epidemic type where it arises from a specific source; generally not infectious person to person.
What is common-source epidemics?
The first disease case in the population.
What is a primary case?
An object such as a piece of clothing, a door handle, or a utensil that can harbor an infectious agent and is capable of being a means of transmission.
What is a fomite?
An individual who has been exposed to and harbors a pathogen but has not become ill or shown any of the symptoms of the disease.
What is a healthy carrier?
Involves characterization of the distribution of health-related states or events.
What is descriptive epidemiology?
An epidemic type that arises from infections transmitted from one infected person to another.
What is propagated epidemics?
The first disease case brought to the attention of the epidemiologist.
What is index case?
An infectious organism in vertebrate animals that can be transmitted to humans through direct contact, a fomite, or a vector.
What is zoonosis?
An individual who has been exposed to and harbors a pathogen and who can spread the disease in different places or at different intervals.
What is an intermittent carrier?