Epi Midterm Study Guide Flashcards
Epidemic
The occurrence in a community or region disease in excess of normal expectancy
Pandemic
The epidemic occurring worldwide, in a wide area, crossing international boundaries, and affecting many people.
Epidemiology
The distribution and determinants of health and diseases, morbidity, injuries, disability, and mortality in populations.
Study of distribution and determinants of disease frequency in human populations, applied to study and control health problems.
Name and discuss three of the key characteristics of epidemiology vs. clinical medicine
The formulation of hypotheses, and exploring causal relationships between exposures and health outcomes, solves a broad range of health-related problems.
Define risk factors. What are some examples of risk factors for the leading causes of disease?
The exposures associated with disease, morbidity, or mortality
Distinguish between the descriptive and analytic approaches.
Descriptive: epidemiological studies that characterize the amount and distribution of health within a population
Analytic: examines causal (etiologic) hypotheses regarding the association between exposures and health outcomes.
Identify an exposure and an outcome from a research abstract
Exposure with disease-causing factor, which leads to outcomes; or all possible results that may stem from exposure to causal factor
What does “distribution” refer to in the definition of epidemiology?
This implies that the occurrence of the disease and other health outcomes varies in populations
What do “determinants” refer to in the definition of epidemiology?
A collective or individual risk factor that is casually related to a health condition, outcomes, or other defined characteristic.
Differentiate between morbidity and mortality.
Morbidity: illness from disease or condition
Mortality: causes of death
Maternal mortality rate
The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is defined as the number of maternal deaths during a given time period per 100,000 live births during the same time period
Infant mortality
The infant mortality is the death of an infant before his or her first birthday. The infant mortality rate is the number of infant deaths for every 1,000 live births.
General fertility rate
The number of resident live births for a specified geographic area (nation, state, county, etc.) during a specified period (usually a calendar year) divided by the female population age 15-44 years (usually estimated for a mid-year) for that area, and the resulting fraction multiplied by a 1,000.
Fetal mortality
The Fetal death refers to the spontaneous intrauterine death of a fetus at any time during pregnancy
Crude birth rate
The Number of deaths over a given period divided by the person-years lived by the population over that period. It is expressed as a number of deaths per 1,000 population
Differentiate rate, ratios, and proportions
Ratio: magnitude of 2 quantities or comparison of any 2 values. (don’t have to be related). Results in “_____ to one”
Proportion: division of 2 related numbers. Num is subset of denom . percentage, fraction, decimal
Rate: division of one number by another; time is in denominator. Measures risk
** ratios = proportions, proportions ≠ ratio
Which measure of central location is most commonly used with the standard deviation?
Mean, median, and mode
Which measure of spread is most affected by an extreme value?
range
Which measure of central location is most appropriate to report for skewed data?
median
Describe the relationship between the measures of central location in normally distributed data
Normal distribution data will not be skewed. The mean, median, and mode are the same.
Define incidence vs prevalence
Incidence: the speed of the occurrence of new cases of cases in a population at risk during a specific time period. Transition from 1 state to another. Denom = pop at risk
Prevalence: measures existing cases of disease in total population over a specific time period. Involves being in a state of disease. Denom = total pop at risk
Proportion of pop with disease!!
Describe how mortality influences prevalence. Provide examples to illustrate the relationship between mortality, incidence, and prevalence.
Mortality will decrease the prevalence of disease if the pop died with the disease of interest.
What are the limitations of using crude rates in epidemiology? Why might crude rates not provide an accurate representation of a population’s health status or disease burden?
Crude rates are not an accurate representation because they only take the average rate of disease and do not consider confounding factors such as demographics
Define and explain alternative measures that can be used to overcome the limitations of crude rates in epidemiological studies.
The studies need to include demographic factors. A crude death rate in one region might be different than another, but those rates do not take population amount, age range, and other factors.