Chapter 1

Question 1

The probability that a 15 years old female will die eventually from a maternal cause assuming that current levels of fertility and mortality (including maternal mortality) do not change in the future.

Answer 1

Lifetime risk of maternal death

Question 2

A term coined by O.W. Mills to describe the sociological approach to analyzing issues, when we make a link between personal troubles and public issues.

Answer 2

Sociological imagination

Question 3

The recurring patterns of social interaction through which people are related to each other, such as social institutions and social groups

Answer 3

Social structure

Question 4

Formal structures within society- such as health care, government, education, religion, and the media- that are organized to address identified social needs.

Answer 4

Social institutions

Question 5

The ability of people, individually and collectively, to influence their own lives and the society in which they live.

Answer 5

Agency

Question 6

A key debate in sociology over the extent to which human behaviour is determined by social structure.

Answer 6

Structure-agency debate

Question 7

Policies, programs, and services designed to keep citizens healthy and to improve the quality of life. The focus is on enhancing the health status and well-being of the general population rather than just looking at the health of individual persons

Answer 7

Public health

Question 8

A position in a system of structured inequality based on the unequal distribution of power, wealth, income, and status. People who share a class position typically share similar life chances

Answer 8

Class (or social class)

Question 9

The statistical study of patterns of disease in the population. Originally focused on epidemics, or infectious diseases, the field now covers non-infectious conditions, such as stroke and cancer. Social epidemiology is a subfield aligned with sociology that focuses on the social determinants of illness.

Answer 9

Epidemiology/social epidemiology

Question 10

A collection of government and government-controlled institutions, including parliament (the government and opposition political parties), the public sector bureaucracy, the judiciary, the military, and the police.

Answer 10

State

Question 11

Refers to the social and economic environments in which people live that determine their health, including housing, job security, food security, working conditions, education, income, social class, gender, Aboriginal status, and the social safety net. The quality of these determinants is a reflection of how society is organized and how it distributes its economic and social resources.

Answer 11

Social determinants of health

Question 12

The idea that there is a specific cause or origin for each specific disease

Answer 12

Specific etiology

Question 13

The conventional approach to medicine in Western societies, based on the diagnosis and explanation of illness as a malfunction of the body’s biological mechanisms. This approach underpins most health professions and health services, which focus on treating individuals, and generally ignores the social origins of illness and its prevention.

Answer 13

biomedicine/biomedical model

Question 14

Also called mind/body dualism and named after the philosopher Descartes, it refers to a belief that the mind and body are separate entities. This assumption underpins medical approaches that view disease in physical terms and thus ignore the psychological and subjective aspects of illness.

Answer 14

Cartesian dualism

Question 15

The belief that all illnesses can be explained and treated by reducing them to biological and pathological factors.

Answer 15

Reductionism

Question 16

An unproven belief that individual and group behaviour and social status is an inevitable result of biology.

Answer 16

Biological determinism

Question 17

The process whereby social inequality is explained in terms of individuals being solely responsible for what happens to them in relation to the choices they make and their assumed psychological, cultural, and/or biological inferiority.

Answer 17

Victim blaming

Question 18

The decisions people make that are likely to impact their health, such as diet, exercise, smoking, alcohol, or drug use. The term implies that people are solely responsible for choosing and changing their lifestyle.

Answer 18

Lifestyle choices

Question 19

Conditions that are thought to increase an individual’s susceptibility to illness or disease, such as abuse of alcohol, poor diet, or smoking.

Answer 19

Risk factors

Question 20

Any combination of education and related organizational, economic, and political interventions designed to promote individual behavioural and environmental changes conducive to good health, including legislation, community development, and advocacy.

Answer 20

Health promotion

Question 21

An extension of the biomedical model, it is a multifactorial model of illness that takes into account the biological, psychological, and social factors implicated in a patient’s condition. As with the biomedical model, it focuses on the individual patient for diagnosis, explanation, and treatment.

Answer 21

Biopsychosocial model

Question 22

Derived from the field of human ecology, and when applied to public health, it suggests that an understanding of health determinants must consider the interaction of social, economic, geographic, and environmental factors.

Answer 22

Ecological model

Question 23

Focuses on social determinants of health, such as the social production, distribution, and construction of health and illness, and the social organization of health care. It directs attention to the prevention of illness through community participation, political action, and social reforms that address living and working conditions.

Answer 23

Social model of health

Question 24

An approach that emphasizes the link between people’s health and the political, economic, and ideological conditions of a society.

Answer 24

Political economy

Question 25

This term refers to the socially constructed categories of feminine and masculine (the cultural values that dictate how men and women should behave), as opposed to the categories of biological sex (female or male).

Answer 25

Gender

Question 26

Sociologically, the term refers to a shared cultural background, which is a characteristic of all groups in society. As a policy term, it is used to identify immigrants who share a culture that is markedly different from that of Anglo-Canadians. In practice, it often refers only to immigrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB migrants).

Answer 26

Ethnicity

Question 27

A term without scientific basis that uses skin colour and facial features to describe allegedly biologically distinct groups of humans. It is a social construction that is used to categorize groups of people and usually implies assumed (and unproven) intellectual superiority or inferiority.

Answer 27

“Race”

Question 28

The socially created characteristics of human life based on the idea that people actively construct reality, meaning it is neither natural nor inevitable. Therefore, notions of normality/abnormality, right/wrong, and health/illness are subjective human creations that should not be taken as a given or universal.

Answer 28

Social constructions