Health and Mortality

Question 1

Health definition (WHO, 1948)

Answer 1

A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity

Question 2

Main factors influencing health

Answer 2

Cultural
Economic
Genetic

Question 3

How to measure health

Answer 3

Population surveys
NHS administrative data
Mortality rates/ Cause specific mortality
Self rated health - predicts mortality more than anything
Hospitalisation
Life satisfaction

Question 4

Life Expectancy

Answer 4

this is the mean length that this cohort is expected to live assuming the mortality rates of the given year

Question 5

Compression of morbidity (Fries, 1983)

Answer 5

assumes life expectancy will reach its biological limits and the average onset of morbidity will be postponed so years of poor health are “compressed”

Question 6

Expansion of morbidity (Gruenberg, 1977)

Answer 6

assumes that due to medical advances that push down the mortality rates of the major drivers of death while their epidemiology stays the same, years with ill health at the end of life increase

Question 7

Dynamic Equilibrium (Manton, 1985)

Answer 7

suggests a continuation of the status quo, where the increase in life expectancy is accompanied by an equivalent postponement of the onset of morbidity/disability

Question 8

Epidemiologic Transition

Answer 8

he replacement of infectious diseases by chronic diseases over time due to expanded public health and sanitation

Question 9

Age recording pandemics

Answer 9

Modernisation triggers a decrease in mortality, which accelerates as epidemic become less frequent or disappear.

Question 10

McKeowen’s Thesis

Answer 10

the importance of economic growth, rising living standards, public health measures and improved nutrition as the primary sources of most historical improvements in the health of developed nations

Question 11

The Black Report 1980

Answer 11

overall health had improved since the introduction of the welfare state, there were widespread health inequalities. the death rate for men in social class V was twice that for men in social class I and that gap between the two was increasing,

Question 12

Neo-Materialist Explanation

Answer 12

income enables access to goods and services and the limitation of exposure to physical, behavioural and psychosocial, risk factors

Question 13

Psychosocial explanation

Answer 13

Factors often associated with low income that

Question 14

Socioeconomic class gradient

Answer 14

explained by the unequal social and economic distribution of psychosocial risk factors

Question 15

Health Selection

Answer 15

health determines socioeconomic class status rather than socioeconomic class determining health. Individuals who are ‘fitter’ are more likely to move up the social hierarchy

Question 16

Preston Curve 1975

Answer 16

The cross-sectional relationship between life expectancy and per capita income

Question 17

Socio-Economic Position (Kaplan, 2000)

Answer 17

the social and economic factors that influence what positions individuals or groups occupy within the structure of society

Question 18

Artefact Approach

Answer 18

difference in health by socioeconomic class can be explained by differences in measurement

Question 19

Cultural-Behavioural

Answer 19

differences between SEP groups in terms of their health-related behaviour: smoking rates, alcohol and drug consumption