Module 1 (Intro to Public Health)

Question 1

How do we define public health?

Answer 1

“The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing services for the early diagnosis and preventative treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for maintenance of health.” - Charles-Edward A. Winslow

Question 2

What are the differences between public health and medical sciences?

Answer 2

Medicine addresses individuals and targets treating illness. Social sciences and policy are ancillary.

Public health addresses population health and serves communities. It focuses on prevention (not treatment). Social sciences and policy are integral.

Question 3

What are the main sciences of public health?

Answer 3

Epidemiology, biostatistics, biomedical sciences, environmental health, social science, and behavioral science

Question 4

How does the federal government influence public health?

Answer 4

Via interstate commerce (enforcing product and drug / environmental/transportation/agriculture laws), taxes (funds collected for social policies / programs), treaties with American Indian tribes, and by promoting general welfare.

Question 5

What are some key examples of public health Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs / Non-profits)?

Answer 5

Care International
Task Force for Global Health
Doctors Without Borders
Partners in Health

Question 6

What is the World Health Organization?

Answer 6

WHO is the United Nations agency that connects nations, partners and people to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable – so everyone, everywhere can attain the highest level of health.

Founded in 1948, headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland

Question 7

What are the 10 essential services of public health?

Answer 7

Monitor Health
Diagnose and Investigate
Inform, educate, and empower
Mobilize Community Partnerships
Develop policies
Enforce laws
Link to / provide care
Assure competent workforce
Evaluate
(repeat)

ALL centered around research & system management

Question 8

What are health disparities?

Answer 8

differences in health conditions that exist because of inequities in our society, including access to public health, medical, or other resources

Question 9

What are major factors which effect communal health?

Answer 9

economic opportunity, housing, environment, education, food, safe neighborhoods, and transportation

Question 10

What are the main functions of epidemiology?

Answer 10

diagnostic discipline of public health
investigates diseases, disabilities, injuries, and the factors that that influence them
It identifies trends within those factors and outcomes
Evaluates the effectiveness of interventions (both medical and public health)
It is observational

Question 11

What is the definition of epidemiology?

Answer 11

the study of the distribution and determinants of disease frequency in human populations

Question 12

What are the three main sections of public health essential services?

Answer 12

Assessment (diagnostic function)
Policy Development (like a doctor’s development of a treatment plan)
Assurance (equivalent to the doctor’s actual treatment)

Question 13

What are some some social and behavioral aspects of public health?

Answer 13

Demographics often related to health (e.g. low income less healthy than higher income)
many are dying from disease caused by behaviors and social environments

Examples:
Poor nutrition and exercise cause conditions like heart disease
Drug addiction and overdose
Smoking and lung cancer
Deaths due to violence

Question 14

What are the 5 classic steps of Public Health’s approach to health problems?

Answer 14

1. Define the health problem
2. Identify associated risk factors
3. Develop and test community level interventions to control or prevent the cause of the problem
4. Implement interventions to improve population health
5. Monitor and assess for effectiveness

Question 15

What are the 3 tiers of intervention?

Answer 15

Primary: prevents an injury or illness from occuring at all
Secondary: seeks to minimize severity / damage from injury or event (occurs after disease has begun but before symptoms occur)
Tertiary: seeks to minimize disability from injury or event

Question 16

What is the “tragedy of the commons?”

Answer 16

An explanation of government restrictions on people’s freedom to harm themselves or to harm others indirectly.

The idea of a communal pasture / commons which would be ruined if every shepherd kept all his flock there maximally (the fields would be overgrazed), so there must be a restriction of shepherd freedom in the form of rules, limitations, and equity.

Question 17

What is the “tyranny of health” phenomenon?

Answer 17

Requirements that restrict peoples’ freedom for their own health and safety (e.g. seatbelts and bike helmets)

Question 18

What is the story of “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making?”

Answer 18

In this statement, the scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread “manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions.”

Bush was reported to have misrepresented or suppressed scientific info to obscure the fact that policy decisions were usually made due to political agenda (favored right wing ideals and large corporations).

Question 19

How is public health economically controversial?

Answer 19

the people or industries paying for public health measures may not directly benefit from said measures. Costs are usually more visible than benefits.

Question 20

What did Hippocrates believe about sickness?

Answer 20

Not caused by gods, but by an imbalance between man and his environment.

Question 21

What is a miasma?

Answer 21

a noxious form of “bad air” once thoughts to cause diseases like cholera, chlamydia, and the Black Death

Question 22

What was the first US federal public health program?

Answer 22

“An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen” signed in 1798 by John Adams due to Yellow Fever outbreak

Question 23

What were some of the biggest public health milestones?

Answer 23

1347 the Bubonic Plague / Black Death
1800 Smallpox Vaccine to US
1831 first Cholera epidemic in London
1887 Staten Island Hygienic Laboratory founded
1894 first Polio epidemic in the US
1916 first school of public health founded (John Hopkins)
1918 Influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu)
1938 Food and Drug Administration formed
1946 CDC founded
1945 Nuremberg Trials & Code (1947)
1952 Polio Vaccine Developed
1957 Asian Flu Pandemic
1970 Environmental Protective Agency Formed
1975 Helsinki Accords
1979 Belmont Report
1981 HIV/AIDS pandemic
2019 COVID-19 pandemic

Question 24

What was the 2001 Anthrax event?

Answer 24

In 2001, powdered anthrax spores were deliberately put into letters that were mailed through the U.S. postal system. Twenty-two people, including 12 mail handlers, got anthrax, and five of these 22 people died.

Question 25

Who was Girolamo Fracastoro?

Answer 25

a physician who coined the term “disease seeds.” This planted the seeds (no pun intended) for germ theory - which came along 300 years later by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.

Question 26

Who was Robert Hooke?

Answer 26

Publish “Micrographia” in 1665 and discovered cells

Question 27

Who was Anton Van Leeuwenhouk?

Answer 27

The father of microscopy

IN 1674, he was the first to see bacteria, yeast, protozoa, sperm cells, and red blood cells

Question 28

What is the WHO definition and factors of health?

Answer 28

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental human right

Healthy child development is of utmost importance

Requires cooperation of informed individuals, states, and government (via adequate health and social measures as Unequal development in various communities is a common danger to health)

Question 29

What were the leading causes of death in 1900?

Answer 29

Pneumonia or Influenza
Tuberculosis
Gastrointestinal infections
Heart disease
Cerebrovascular disease (thrombosis, stenosis, hemorrhage)
Neuropathies
Accidents
Cancer
Senility
Diptheria

Question 30

What is the Affordable Care Act?

Answer 30

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a comprehensive reform law, enacted in 2010, that increases health insurance coverage for the uninsured and implements reforms to the health insurance market.

The three main components:
make affordable health insurance available to more people
expand the medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the federal poverty level
Support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower general costs

Question 31

What is incidence versus prevalence?

Answer 31

Incidence is a measure of the number of new cases of a characteristic that develop in a population in a specified time period; whereas prevalence is the proportion of a population who have a specific characteristic in a given time period, regardless of when they first developed the characteristic.