Health and inequalities and the social determinants of health Flashcards
What is the central purpose of epidemiology
- understanding the cause of disease and illness and understadning the risk factors of disease and illness
To understand risk factors and the cause of disease and illness what do you need to look at
- need to look at differences between individuals and as well as the incidence and prevalence of disease across population
what is the high risk individual focus
- this is the traditional medical approach to prevention
- it is focused on screening individuals to detect risk factors and then intervening as required
What is the population wide focus
- more aligned to upstream public health interventions
What is the downside of the high risk individual focus
- can lead to the blame of the patient as approach to the population wide public health approach
What is the privatisation (individualisation) of risk
- the risk privatization, so pervasive in mordern epidemiology reflects the value system now underlying much of public health and preventive medicine in the US
- this system gives primacy to personal autonomy and action and seeks to induce personal behaviour change rather than to promote social interventions that often must confront powerful opposing interests to population risk straegies
to find the determinants of prevalence and incidnence rates you need to study the …
- characteristics of populations not the characteristics of individuals
what is a persons positive in society influenced by
- other characterstics such as a persons gender, race, sexuality, religion and accent
What does intersectionality describe
The term ‘intersectionality’ describes the manner in which different social identities can intersect with each other to determine a person’s social position and combine to accentuate or mitigate threats to health.
