Life course- public health (word doc notes) Flashcards
What is the main learning point from the life course approach?
Each stage in your life and your health within that stage is influenced by previous stages in life and will influence upcoming stages of life. This means all environmental, socioeconomic and biological factors at any current or previous stage will influence your health.
Integration of all factors both past and present
What is meant by the lifecourse giving a temporal and societal perspective on health and well-being?
Temporal means life long impacts
Societal - persepcective means our health is influences by everyone we interact with including those of older, the same and newer generations
What is meant by critical time periods by the life course model?
That certain stages in life are known as sensitive developmental stages, meaning our experiences during this time of life can have a greatest effect on our ongoing health,
This includes foetal development, early childhood and adolescence. This stages are more variable in their health risk so prevention and education is more important
Whilst working adults are more fixed in their health risk.
How does functional capacity change with ageing?
Functional capacity increases rapidly during early stage development into adulthood.
It reaches a plateau of peak performance in early adulthood then decreases at a slow than faster rate as we age.
Inequalities in functional capacity widen as we age, there is a greater variation in how quickly people’s functional capacity declines.
What is meant by the disability threshold?
When a persons functional capacity declines to a point that it stops them from living their normal quality of life, this threshold varies by person and place depending on the level of support available.
What are some noticeable disparities between more and less deprived areas?
More deprived areas are four times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease under the age of 75yrs.
x2 more likely to commit suicide
x2 infant mortality
x3 the number of under 18yrs pregnant.
Why is the life course approach different to other public health models?
Focuses on intervention in early life, reduce the risk for many diseases rather than one specific illness.
Tackles problems before they arise rather than at the point of need e.g vaccination during an outbreak
What are the four different conceptual models of the life course approach?
- A critical period model - certain time in development have the greatest effect
- A critical period model with later effect modifiers - risk is set early in life but the risk is only activated later in life.
- Accumulation of risk independent and uncorrelated results - events influencing health over the lifecourse our unrelated but can accumulate to have an effect on health outcomes
- Accumulation of risk of correlated insults - events increase the probability of other events happening, this effect adds together to influence health outcomes
What are the different pathways in which the lifecourse can have an effect?
- Biological pathway - poor foetal lung development = more infections
- Social pathway -ACE and lifestyle
- Socio-biological pathway - poverty, malnourished so poor growth
- Bio social pathway - illness with regular hospital admission will decrease educational attainment
What are the different effects linking different generations?
Often shown through a hierarchical schematic.
Period effect - live through a same event at the same time e.g war
Joint neighbourhood effect - live in the same environmental conditions
Genetic links if related
Attachment - primary figure of attachment often mother/father are in a different generation, base decision include lifestyle risks and social referencing on this person
What factor is always different between different generation?
Birth cohort - born within the same time span, often a five year time period.
What is meant by protective factors?
Positive influence on health over the lifecourse
E.g high educational achievement
Good quality housing
Good support network
What happens to health inequalities over a life span?
Health inequalities grow from childhood to adult.
One disadvantage leads way to larger disadvantages.
Inequalities are passed between generations, this is known as the spiral of decline.
How does the life course model influence epidemiology studies?
Recognises the importance of and encourages more cohort studies, prospective and retrospective studies
Aims to generate broad scopes of information to identify common risk factors over a life time between many people
Used in physiological, biological and cognitive research.
Recognises that factors can have an influence in isolation and in combination with other factors.
What is the foetal development hypothesis?
The environmental exposures during gestation influence health outcomes later in life, including the risk of chronic disease.
Bodily function is programmed to have a maximum function, limiting this function during foetal development can lead to negative health outcomes
