Epidemiology, a population health perspective

Question 1

What is population health?

Answer 1

the health outcomes of groups of individuals including the distribution of such outcomes within the group

Question 2

What are two important patters of health distribution in NZ?

Answer 2

• ethnicity
• socioeconomic status

Question 3

How can we assess socioecnomic status?

Answer 3

Occupation, income, deprivation, education, living standard measures

Question 4

What is NZDep and what is included?

Answer 4

• Area based measure of deprivation (areas of ~100/200 people)
• Deciles: one is an area with the least deprived score, ten is an area with the most deprived score
• considers a range of aspects but not everything
• can be used for everyone
• can be determined form address (neighbourhood measure, not individual measure)
• measures relative socioeconomic deprivation
• complexity behind the measure

Question 5

What are social determinants of health?

Answer 5

the social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, and he wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life

Individual lifestyle factors, social and community influences, living and working conditions, general socioeconomic cultural and environmental conditions

Question 6

Absolute poverty vs relative poverty

Answer 6

absolute: income level below minimum nutrition diet standards and essential non-food requirements (below the basic necessities)

relative: the amount of income a person, family or group needs to purchase a relative amount of basic necessities of life (these necessities are identified relative o each society and economy)