Definitions from the Book Flashcards
Social Determinants of Health
Income, employment, education, social class, sex, race, ethinicity and other living conditions that influence health status and access to health services.
Socioeconomic status (SES) or Socioeconomic Position (SEP)
Indicates an individual’s (or family’s) standing in a society bases on social, economic, and educational characteristics.
Health Disparities
Differences in Health status between population groups.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
is the total amount of goods and services produced both by the countries corporations and foreign corporations.
Gross National Income (GNI)
Puts the focus on the total income from the selling of goods and services produced in the country.
Gross National Product (GNP)
is the total amount of goods and services produced by the countries companies and that countries companies working in other countries.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
Measures how many goods, services and other products can be purchases in each country with a fixed amount of money.
Gini Index
a measure of the inequality in the distribution of incomes within a particular country.
Human Development Index (HDI)
Developed by the World Bank, is an estimate of national development based on composite data on longevity, knowledge and income.
Culture
is a way of living, believing, behaving, communicating and understanding the world that is shared by members of a social unit. Culture includes a groups norms, values, morals, rules and customs.
Complementary/alternative Medicine (CAM)
Refers to the use of health care practices outside of a person’s own tradition or that are not part of conventional medical practice.
Causes of mortality in children during their first five years of life
- Neonatal deaths (including preterm birth complications)
- Diarrheal Diseases
- Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs)
- Malaria
- Injuries
- HIV/AIDs
- Measles
- Other Infections
Germ Theory
Did not become widely accepted until the late 1800s, but for many centuries before microscopes allowed people to see pathogens, communities recognized that some illnesses were linked to environmental exposures and they took care to dispose of human waste, to protect water sources and to bury the carcasses of diseased animals.
Miasma Theory of disease
blamed the spread of cholera on contact with those offensive gases. This was a reasonable conclusion because the people who lived in the gassy marshy areas were the same people who drank the bacterium-infected water that was the true cause of the outbreak. (as determined by John Snow, one of the founders of modern epidemiology who traced the source of one outbreak in London back to one very specific source, the broad street water pump.)
Drinking water quality
Water must be clean enough to drink safely. It needs to be free of bacteria, viruses and parasites that can cause infecton and must also be free of harmful chemicals and sediments. The water should not appear cloudy, dirty or strangely colored, so that it does not cause problems with cooking or washing. Ideally the water should be drawn from a protected source which means that people should not wash clothes or bathe near where drinking water is collected and animals, sewage and garbage should be kept away from the water source.
