Unit 1
This describes the tension in public health between giving priority to individuals-individual autonomy-and promoting the good of groups or populations.
What is the Fundamental ethical dilemma of public health?
True or False? Public health preparedness utilizes the phases of emergency management when preparing for, responding to, and recovering from a public health emergency.
True
This type of vector picks up infectious agents on the outside of their bodies and transmits the agents to susceptible hosts through physical contact. Essentially a living vehicle for the agents.
What is a Mechanical vector?
Are mental illnesses easy or difficult for epidemiologists to count/track?
Since mental illnesses are sometimes difficult to diagnose (due to overlap of symptoms) they are difficult for epidemiologists to count/track.
Explain a way we can reduce the prevalence of a food desert.
Reduce the prevalence of food deserts by: Encouraging developers to build affordable housing near existing grocery stores and markets
(A food desert lacks a full-service grocery store)
This is a framework that considers how individuals and their environment interact with each other, and it consists of levels that prevention efforts should strive to impact.
What is the Social-Ecological Model?
This strategy seeks root causes of disease and disability and addresses issues through prevention rather than treatment.
What is the Upstream metaphor?
These are intervention strategies designed for an entire population without regard to individual risk factors. Provides all members of a population with the information and skills necessary to prevent substance abuse.
What is universal prevention strategies?
What is the building up of a chemical in an organism’s tissues over its lifetime, as the organism continually takes in more than it excretes?
What is Bioaccumulation?
(Biomagnification is the process by which a chemical becomes more concentrated in the tissues of organisms at each higher level of the food chain within an ecosystem.)
What are the risk factors for preterm birth, low birth weight (LBW), childbirth injury, maternal mortality, and infant mortality?
What are grand multiparity, short inter-pregnancy interval, and late/inadequate prenatal care?
______________ describes a disease occurring within an area or community at all times (the constant presence of a disease in a geographic population)
What is endemic level?
Transmission of antibiotic resistant infections is facilitated by increased trade, travel, and human/animal migration. What describes this?
What is Globalization?
Please explain why children are more affected by poor air quality? (air pollution)
Typically children spend more time outdoors
Typically children are more active, which leads to greater exposure per time unit outdoors
Children’s lungs are developing therefore they are in a sensitive period for exposure; reduced lung function
What is a Threshold? (relating to the dose response curve)
What is the time where the toxin does not have an effect on the body? Toxin can be excreted before it has an effect on the body, etc.
Explain what the epidemiologic transition is
Changing patterns of population distributions in
relation to changing patterns of mortality, fertility, life expectancy, and leading causes of death. As deaths from famine and infectious diseases (communicable) decreased, and life expectancy increased, the burden of disease has shifted to chronic, noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke. Changes in population growth trajectories and
composition.
Explain the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.
Primary prevention: Prevent exposure to risk factors = reduce incidence
Secondary prevention: Early detection & management = minimize harm
Tertiary prevention: Treatment = minimize disability & mortality
List the 6 links in the chain of infection, and describe one of the links.
1. Infectious agent (pathogen): virus, bacterium, or parasite that causes the disease in humans
2. Reservoir: place where pathogen lives and multiplies
3. Poral of exit: where the pathogen leaves/exits the host
4. Method/Mode of Transmission: the way pathogen travels from one host to another, or from a reservoir to a new host
5. Portal of entry: where the pathogen enters the host
6. Susceptible host: even if the pathogen enters, a new potential host may not be susceptible because that host has immunity to the pathogen
Explain what a half-life is.
the time it takes for a certain amount of a toxin to be reduced by half. This occurs as it breaks down in the environment.
Explain what the risk factors for foodborne illness at the industry level are.
Colonization-presence of a microorganism on/in a host, with growth and multiplication of the organism, but without interaction between host and organism. Example: E. coli in cows or Salmonella in poultry
Farming- Example: feeding corn instead of grass to cows; concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFOs), widespread antibiotic use in animals
Mass distribution- small problem can become huge
Cross-contamination – Example: not wearing proper PPE (cross-contamination can explain why other types of foods end up implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks)
Explain what the provisions and regulations of the ACA are.
Provisions (what is provided by ACA):
• Children can stay on a parent’s insurance plan until age 26. Many preventive services are free to insured patients. Medicare prescription drug coverage is more affordable. States can opt to receive federal funds for expansion of Medicaid programs to uninsured.
Regulations (basically rules made by ACA):
• Individual mandate is that you must have health insurance or pay a fine. (Mandate was abolished in 2017, so no longer federal penalty.) Large business (50 or more employees) must pay assessment to IRS if they do not insure employees.
• Insurance companies cannot: Have lifetime limits on health coverage. Cancel policies of patients when medical costs rise. Spend too much on administrative costs or profits
As part of the _____________ function, public health seeks to understand the medical care system in an area of study generally referred to as health policy and management or health administration, which also includes the administration and functioning of the public health system. (making resources/services accessible to all members of all communities)
What is assurance?
There are three areas of key challenges/barriers to achieving herd immunity, elimination, and eradication for vaccine-preventable diseases in the US. Describe each of these three areas.
Access: Cost/financial barrier, Insurance coverage, Location/distance to care, Underserved communities, Lifestyle/migration, Convenience/language barriers.
Main factor is hesitancy: Fear of vaccine safety, Lack of fear of diseases, Distrust, Fear of collateral effects, Misinformation, Lack of knowledge
Infrastructure: vaccine supply/storage, data sharing, state and local programs, disaster response, surveillance and outbreak response, outreach, education, etc.
List the 7 steps in the Exposure Pathway and give an example of each.
1. Contaminant Source = industry, tanks, drums, contaminated debris, unknown sources
2. Release Mechanism = emissions, spills, leaks, direct discharge, volatilization, burning
3. Impacted Media = air, soil, sediments, groundwater, surface water
4. Transport Mechanisms = dispersal & deposition, migration to subsurface soils or groundwater, volatilization, runoff, uptake by animals or plants, groundwater flow surface water transport
5. Exposure Media = biota or water, surface or subsurface soil, indoor or outdoor air, groundwater, surface water, sediment
6. Route of Exposure = inhalation, ingestion, injection, absorption through the skin (transdermal) and eyes
7. Receptor Population = animals, humans, farmers, etc.
Explain one of the control strategies for occupational injury/disease (elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, PPE)
Elimination (most effective): physically remove the hazard.
Substitution: replace the hazard.
Engineering controls: isolate people from the hazard.
Administrative controls: change the way people work.
PPE (least effective): protect the worker with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Explain some programs/things that the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) accomplished.
Truth Campaign, billions of dollars to states, restrictions on advertising, Quit Line, NV uses money for Millennium Scholarship.
MSA prohibits brand name merchandise, marketing to youth (use of cartoons in ads), sponsorship of concerts, outdoor ads and transit ads