Chp 4
This term refers to the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age — and is a key concept in Chapter 4.
What are the social determinants of health?
This concept emphasizes that human health, animal health, and ecosystem health are tightly interconnected — central to the “One Health” approach in Chapter 14.
What is One Health?
This chapter defines this term as exposures in the air, water, soil or food that can adversely impact health.
What are environmental hazards?
Chapter 6 describes this group of diseases — such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes — which are not passed from person to person.
What are noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)?
A public health team learns that residents in a rural area aren’t getting screened for cancer because they believe they aren’t personally at risk and think screenings are inconvenient.
What concept explains this behavior according to the Health Belief Model (Chapter 4)? Low perceived susceptibility and high perceived barriers.
This behavioral theory discussed in the chapter suggests that individuals’ perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits and barriers influence their health behaviour.
What is the Health Belief Model?
In systems thinking, this term describes the type of feedback loop that accelerates change, either positively or negatively, within a health system.
What is a reinforcing (or positive) feedback loop?
The chapter describes this metric (units: ppm or µg/m³) used to quantify the concentration of a pollutant in air.
What is pollutant concentration?
This modifiable behavioural risk factor (highlighted in Chapter 6) is responsible for a large share of NCD burden globally.
What is tobacco use (or smoking)?
A factory worker develops chronic breathing problems after years of exposure to small amounts of airborne chemicals.
This scenario illustrates what type of environmental health hazard? A chronic chemical exposure (environmental hazard from the workplace) — (Chapter 8).
The chapter describes this model of levels of influence (individual, interpersonal, community, societal) used to design public‐health interventions.
What is the Social Ecological Model?
The chapter argues that instead of solving a problem in isolation, we must look at this larger pattern of cause-and-effect across sectors and over time.
What is a systems map (or systems perspective)?
A key framework in the chapter for assessing risk consists of hazard identification, dose‐response assessment, exposure assessment, and this final step.
What is risk characterization?
The chapter explains this term meaning the presence of two or more chronic conditions in an individual (eg diabetes + hypertension).
What is comorbidity or multimorbidity?
A 55-year-old man with diabetes also develops hypertension and high cholesterol, leading to increased risk of heart disease.
What term describes the coexistence of multiple chronic diseases in one person?Comorbidity (or multimorbidity) — (Chapter 6).
In Chapter 4, these two concepts are paired: one describes how people perceive health risks, and the other describes the actual rate or severity of disease in a population.
What are risk perception and disease burden?
This phenomenon occurs when a single solution to a problem leads to unintended consequences in another part of the system — a caution described in Chapter 14.
What is a system unintended consequence (or “rippling effect”)?
Chapter 8 covers this concept whereby health effects can accumulate over time due to repeated low level exposures rather than one big dose.
What is chronic exposure (or cumulative exposure)?
According to Chapter 6, public-health policy uses this type of preventive approach (screening people before disease onset) to reduce NCDs.
What is secondary prevention?
A health department reduces sugary drink sales in schools, launches an ad campaign, and increases access to safe water fountains. These combined actions target the problem from multiple angles.
What type of systems-thinking strategy is this? A multi-sector systems intervention — (Chapter 14).
The chapter highlights this type of intervention strategy that modifies the environment (eg regulation, urban design) rather than focusing only on individual behaviour.
What are structural interventions (or environmental/ policy interventions)?
Chapter 14 uses this term for interventions that look at root causes across multiple determinants (eg environment, policy, behaviour) rather than a narrow treatment of one factor.
What are multi‐level/ multi‐sector interventions?
The chapter uses this term to describe diseases caused by environmental factors such as lead or asbestos, often preventable through public-health policies.
What are environment‐related diseases (or environmentally mediated diseases)?
This framework in the chapter outlines the sequence from “determinants → risk factors → disease → disability → death” — fundamental to understanding NCDs.
What is the natural history of disease (or the risk‐disease cascade)?
A new mosquito-borne illness emerges, traced back to deforestation and increased human–animal contact. Veterinarians, environmental scientists, and physicians collaborate to address it.
What interdisciplinary approach does this represent? The One Health approach — (Chapter 14).