Module Six Flashcards
What is primary prevention?
Interventions that attempt to prevent disease from occurring e.g. immunisations
What is secondary prevention?
Reducing the impact of disease by shortening its duration, reducing the severity or preventing recurrence e.g. screening
What is tertiary prevention?
Reducing the number or impact of complications and improve rehabilitation e.g. specialist rehabilitation programs
What is high risk (individual) strategy for primary prevention?
Individuals in special need are identified, the preventative processes then takes the form of controlling the level of exposure to a cause, or providing protection against the consequences of he exposure in this high risk group
What is population (mass) strategy for primary prevention?
Aims to reduce the health risks of the entire population
What are examples of high risk approaches?
Loss of licence, ignition interlocks, education and opportunities
What are examples of population approaches?
Legislation, pricing
What are the advantages for population strategies?
Radical, large potential for whole population, behaviourally appropriate
What are the disadvantages for population strategies?
Small benefit to individuals, poor motivation of individuals, benefit-to-risk ratio may be low for individuals
What are the advantages for high risk strategies?
Appropriate to individuals, individual motivation, clinical motivation, favourable benefit-risk ratio for individuals
What are the disadvantages for high risk strategies?
Need to identify individuals, might be aginst population norms, can be hard to sustain behavioural change
What is prevention paradox?
A large number of people at small risk may give rise to more cases of disease than the small number of people who are at high risk
What is evidence based practice?
Combination of best available evidence, clinical expertise and patient values and choices
Why is good evidence vital?
Stops ineffective treatments from being used, stops treatments for which the harms outweigh the benefits, could fails to provide effective interventions, new expensive treatments could be no better than old cheaper ones
What are types of surveillance?
Indicator based and event based
What is indicator-based surveillance?
Method for monitoring and detecting public health threats by collecting, analysing, and interpreting data from health facilities
What is event-based surveillance?
Method of using unstructured information to provide early warning of health threats
What are the types of indicator based surveillance?
Passive, active and sentinel surveillance
What is passive surveillance?
Routine reporting of health data through notifiable diseases, disease registries and hospital data
What is active surveillance?
Serosurveillance - the monitoring of the presence of absence of specific substances in the blood serum of a population
and Health surveys
What is sentinel survellance?
Using health data from selective institutions or groups to monitor diseases or tends to detect outbreaks
What is screening?
The widespread use of a simple test for disease in an apparent health population
What is a screening programme?
An organised system using a screening test among asymptomatic people in the population to identify early cases of disease in order to improve outcomes
What is screening an example of?
Secondary prevention
What is lead time?
The time between disease detection and when symptoms appear
What is sensitivity?
The proportion of people with the disease who test positive
a / a + c
What is specificity?
The proportion of people without the disease who test negative
d / b + d
What is a positive predictive value?
The proportion of people who test positive and have the disease
a / a + b
What is a negative predictive value?
The proportion of people who test negative and don’t have the disease
d / c + d
What is infection?
entry of a microbiological agent into a higherorder host and its multiplication within the host
What is infectivity?
ability of an organism to invade and multiply in a host (secondary attack rate)
What is pathogenicity?
Ability of an organism to produce clinical
symptoms and illness (proportion of those exposed who
get ill)
What is virulence?
Ability of an organism to produce serious
disease (case-fatality rate)
What is direct transmission?
– touching or inhaling infectious
secretions (saliva, respiratory droplets, urine,
faeces, other body fluids)
What is indirect transmission?
always involves a vehicle:
- Inanimate - fomites (bedding, clothes,
utensils); food or water; soil
- Live = vector (mosquitos, ticks)
What is airborne transmission?
– droplet nuclei = small particles <5
micrometres e.g. tuberculosis
What is a epidemic?
Unexpected increase in the incidence of a disease
What is an endemic?
Constant presence of a disease or infectious agent within a geographical area or population group E.g. malaria is endemic to parts of Africa and Asia
What is a holoendemic?
intense disease all year round - children mainly infected, most adults immune
What is a hyperendemic?
Intense disease with time
periods of no transmission e.g. during the dry
season - persistent disease with all ages infected
What is a pandemic?
Disease affects a large number of people and crosses many international boundaries
What is a common source outbreak?
From a continuous or intermittent point source
What is a propagated sourced outbreak?
From person to person
What is a mixed out break?
From point source then propagated from person to person
Common source
Continuous source
Intermittent source
Propagated source
