Core Concepts
External risk, protective and health promoting influences that can work through different complementary and often interacting mechanisms to impact health and well-being.
What are Social Determinants of Health (SDoH)?
Steroid hormone produced by the adrenal glands also known as the "stress horomone".
What is cortisol?
Childhood poverty, abuse, neglect and divorce
What are examples of ACES (adverse childhood experiences)?
Government program in the United States that provides health insurance for adults and children with limited income and resources.
What is Medicaid?
A change, such as famine, that affects all individuals in a society at a particular time, regardless of their age or cohort.
What is a period effect?
An integrated, developing continuum of exposures, experiences and interactions that creates health or illness.
What is a health trajectory?
The study of the interactions between genes and their products that ultimately produce a phenotype.
What is epigenetics?
Our lives are not lived in isolation. We are deeply influenced by the lives of those around us, and they are influenced by us.
What is linked lives?
A federal-state partnership where states receive funds from the federal government to address the specific health needs of their MCH populations.
What is Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Services Block Grant?
Statistical technique used within a systematic review that provides a pooled estimate of the effect of an intervention or exposure.
What is a meta analysis?
Theory that posits that health is a complex and continuous capacity of an individual to respond to and interact with internal and external environment which, in turn, determines an individual’s health trajectory.
What is (our class definition of) Life Course Theory
The ability of an organism to alter its phenotype in response to environmental challenges, opportunities, barriers, and constraints by immediate adaptive response.
What is (phenotypic) plasticity?
Safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments that can offset the negative impacts of ACEs.
What are buffers?
Administrative unit within the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) responsible for administering the Title V Maternal & Child Health Services Block Grant.
A type of sample selection bias where researchers only consider existing observations are considered, while those that have failed or ceased to exist are ignored.
What is survivor bias?
Theory that poor fetal growth and nutrition, often indicated by low birth weight, are linked to an increased risk of adult conditions like heart disease.
What is the theory of fetal orgins of adult disease (FOAD) also known as Barker's hypothesis?
The work that the body is carrying to adjust its physiology to be prepared to respond to a changing environment.
What is allostatic load?
Theory that posits that Black women experience early, accelerated aging as a result of their cumulative exposure to racism.
What is weathering?
A combination of individual and collective actions designed to secure political commitment, policy support, social acceptance, and systemic backing for specific health objectives or programs.
What is advocacy?
When an exposure is followed by some period of time (can be years) before a specific response is developed.
What is a latent effect (medical/biological)?
Developmental periods during which an organism is particularly responsive to environmental influences.
What are "sensitive" or "critical" periods?
A type of epigenetic modification where CH3 is added to a gene sequence altering how much protein a gene produces, effectively turning genes on or off.
What is gene methylation?
What is John Henryism or Sojourner Syndrome?
A type of healthcare delivery system that coordinates healthcare services for its members. The primary goal is to control costs while maintaining or improving the quality of care.
What is a managed care organization (MCO)?
Studies that combine elements of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies by including multiple age groups or cohorts.
What is a cross-sequential study (aka sequential or accelerated longitudinal)?