Values
Interventions
Who Said What?
Social Factors
Wild Card
100
is it ethical to have a randomized community intervention without a consent process?
There is no right answer.
100
What are 3 limitations of randomized community trials?
Potential for measurement error because of multifaceted outcome and complex behaviors Long latency period/follow-up period Expensive Ethical issues (type of intervention; consent of community) Contamination issues (SUTVA) Hawthorne effect Compliance issues Dealing with values vs. science
100
"If counterparts are conceivable- and why not? - then counterfactuals that violate identity conditions are intelligible, and if counterfactuals are intelligible, then causal relations are as well."
Who is Glymour (1986)
100
Is race a social fact or individual attribute?
Kaufman JS, Cooper RS. (1999) Limited to examination of SES factors to observational studies b/c impractical to apply to humans in an experimental setting On a philosophical level, if the exposure if an attribute of u, we cannot contemplate the same unit in the unexposed state—a black person who is not black cannot be the same person; cannot condition on complex and historically dependent psychosocial factors that would be make blacks and whites interchangeable Muntaner C. (1999) Rejects biologic theory of race—says race is a Social fact a Social relation—if we think of it this way, counterfactual arguments become plausible—we can imagine changing Blackness or Whiteness position Can think about racism, economic discrimination, political exclusion
100
What is INUS?
"An insufficient but necessary part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result"
200
What "extra-scientific" consideration is needed when determining policy with competing outcomes?
(Kaufman 2007, 356) There is no way to avoid the imposition of some set of value judgments.
200
How could a flu vaccination intervention violate SUTVA?
In a flu vaccination program, a person who does not receive a vaccination will have a lower risk of getting the flu if someone he lives with gets the vaccination. Like herd immunity.
200
"All statistical modeling is a compromise between inconvenient truth and useful location."
Who is Kaufman.
200
According to Rothman and Mackie’s definitions of a cause, can social variables be studied causes?
Greenland define a cause of a specific disease event in two ways: 1. A cause is an antecedent event, condition, or characteristic that was necessary for the occurrence of the disease at the moment it occurred, given that other conditions are fixed, A cause is an event, condition, or characteristic that preceded the disease event and without which the disease event either would not have occurred at all or would not have occurred until some later time (p. S144). Mackie: An insufficient but necessary part of a condition, which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result)
200
What would Clark Glymour's name have been if he had been born a girl?
Olga
300
Rationalize the Summers document supporting the World Bank memo advocating the export of pollution from industrialized nations into less-developed countries.
Competing Causes
300
What is one way to create an intervention when we have an unmodfiable cause?
Identify potential actions within ordinary events; Some causes should be considered intermediate causes back to events with intervention potential or search for action that prevents actual outcome; Example: earthquake--enforcement of strict building codes (create intervention on an intermediate)
300
"The utility of randomized trials for social epidemiology, in which the prospect for adequate control of confounding by conditioning on measured covariates appears particularly hopeless."
Who is Kaufman(2003).
300
What are 3 examples of unmodifiable causes?
Earthquakes (or other natural disasters)-neutral example Years of education Race (charged example)
300
What are the three components of class in social epidemiology?
Income, education, and occupation.
400
What is preferable: to maximize the expected outcome for the whole population? or minimize the worst possible harm to any sub-group?
(Kaufman 2007) (No right answer, but think about Rose and last week's readings)
400
What is a limitation of doing a non-randomized community intervention?
If impose a policy do not always know what the baseline outcome is at follow-up Without randomization there could be confounding due to unmeasured differences between the groups corresponding to intervention and outcome
400
"The unsurpassable advantage of community trials is that they test practicable public health interventions…the design discourages consideration of what could be done "if the world were just a little different.""
Who is Oakes (2004).
400
What are three ways we can measure the effects of racism?
Psychiatric diagnoses, medical referrals, employment and housing decisions
400
Provide an example of confounding due to incommensurate indicators?
Black vs. white payoff of education level.
500
Are informal causal hypothesis allowed under the potential outcome framework?
Speculative explanations are allowed under PO, because PO allows form partial quantification of outcomes, Y(xc), under counterfactual actions embedded in ordinary language. Consider: "An effect of taking an action, xj, rather than another action, xk, on an outcome measure, Y, is a numerical contrast of the measure under two different actions."
500
What are DALE, DALY, and QALY and how are they related to public health interventions?
disability-adjusted life expectancy, quality adjusted life expectancy, and disability-adjusted life-years; helps us understand the relative valuation of health states; relative valuation of a disabled state as a discounted healthy life
500
"Perhaps it may be good for the public's health to consider "what could be done if the world was just a little different.""
Who is Diex Roux (2004).
500
Why would we be interested in studying "neighborhood effects"?
Because different neighborhoods (e.g., advantaged vs. disadvantaged) can have different effects on health;
500
What is the counterfactual of "Black" exposure and diabetes otucome?
Tough one, can you do it?
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