Public health Flashcards
What are the determinants of health
o Genes
o Environment – physical and social
o Lifestyle
o Health care
What is the difference between equity and equality?
o Equity = About what is fair & just
Depends on the need
o Equality = Concerned with equal shares
Describe the three domains of Public Health practice
- Health improvement
- Concerned with societal interventions (not primarily delivered through health services) aimed at preventing disease, promoting
health, and reducing inequalities - Health protection
- Concerned with measures to control infectious disease risks and
environmental hazards - Improving services (Health care)
- Concerned with the organisation and delivery of safe, high quality
services for prevention, treatment, and care
Difference between horizontal equity and vertical equity?
Horizontal equity
- Equal treatment for equal need
e. g. Individuals with pneumonia (with all other things being equal) should be treated equally
Vertical equity
- Unequal treatment for unequal need
e. g. Individuals with common cold vs pneumonia need unequal treatment
e. g. Areas with poorer health may need higher expenditure on health services
What are different forms of health equity?
Equal expenditure for equal need Equal access for equal need Equal utilisation for equal need Equal health care outcome for equal need Equal health
What are the dimensions of equity?
- Spatial - geographical
- Social:
- Age
- Gender
- Class
- Ethnicities
What are the domains in examining health equity?
- Supply of health care
- Access to health care
- Utilisation of health care
- Health care outcomes
- Health status
- Resource allocation -health services and other services such as education and housing
- Wider determinants of heath - diet, smoking, socioeconomic, physical environment
Steps in accessing health inequalities?
1) Assess inequality
2) Then decide if inequitable
Inequalities need to be explained
But equality (Eg: Equal utilization) may NOT be equitable
Different levels of public health interventions? with example
o Individual lvl: Eg: Vaccinations
o Community lvl: Eg: Education in schools
o Ecological (Population) lvl: Laws to make smoking or alcohol harder
Different levels of risks in Domestic abuse?
STANDARD – current evidence does NOT indicate likelihood of causing serious harm
MEDIUM – there are identifiable indicators of risk of serious harm. Offender has potential to cause serious harm but unlikely unless change in circumstances
HIGH – there are identifiable indicators of imminent risk of serious harm. Dynamic – could happen at any time and impact would be serious
Use DASH risk checklist
Where do you refer high risk domestic abuse cases to?
Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC)
IDVAS - Independent domestic violence advisor service
What is incidence?
New cases/ number of disease free people at
the start of the study
Number of new cases per unit time
What is prevelance?
Number of existing cases at a given time
What is absolute risk?
Measurement of likelihood of a certain event would happen
gives a feel for actual
numbers involved i.e. has units
e.g. 50 deaths / 1000 population
What is relative risk?
Measurement of risk of a certain event happening as compared to other
Tells us about the strength of association between a risk factor and a disease
Absolute risk of expoure / abosulte risk in the unexposed
What is attributable risk?
Rate of disease that can be attributed to exposure
o Incidence in exposed – Incidence in unexposed
Is about the size of effect in absolute terms i.e. gives a feel for the public health impact (if causality is assumed)
What is number needed to treat?
Number of patients you need to treat to prevent 1 additional bad outcome
o Formula = 1/Absolute risk increase
Two main types of bias?
- Selection bias - selection of participant (sampling bias), and Allocation of participants into different study groups
- Information measurement bias:
- Observer - Observer bias - (Different observers may assess subjective criteria differently; Eg: Being aware of a subject’s disease status may introduce a bias in how the outcome is assessed)
- Participant - Recall bias - Due to differences in accuracy or completeness of the recollections retrieved by study participants regarding events or experiences from the past
- Instrument (wrongly caliberated)
3. Publication bias - negative results are not published
If association is not causal what else do you need to consider?
o Bias
o Chance
o Confounding
o Reverse causality
What is the bradford hill criteria for causality?
- Temporality: does exposure precede the outcome?
- Dose-response: the higher the exposure, the higher the risk of disease
- Strength of association: the magnitude of the relative risk
- Reversibility (experiment): removal of exposure reduces risk of disease
- Consistency- similar results from different researchers using various study designs
- Biological plausibility - biological mechanisms explaining the link
What are the different types of prevention?
- Primary = Intervention to prevent onset of disease
- Secondary = Intervention to pick up asymptomatic individuals with disease & treat
- Tertiary = Intervention to reduce -ve effects of disease from symptomatic individuals
What is the prevention paradox?
A preventive measure which brings much benefit to the population often offers little to each participating individual
What is the wilson and jugner criteria?
- The condition:
- needs to be an important health problem
- needs to have a latent phase
- known disease progression - A screening test:
- acceptable
- suitable - Treatment:
- Effective
- Agreed policy on whom to treat - organisation and cost:
- Cost effective
- Facilities
- On-going process
What is sensitivity?
Proportion of people with the disease to be correctly identified by the test
Memory: How sensitive is the test in picking out those with the disease accurately (True positives)
Formula: true positive / (true positive + false negative)
What is specificity?
Proportion of individuals without the disease to be correctly excluded from the results of the test
Memory: How specific is this test in diagnosing those without the condition?
Formula: True negative/ (true negative + false positive)
What is positive predicted value?
Proportion of people with a positive test who actually has the disease
What is negative predicted value?
Proportion of people with a negative test who don’t have the disease
What is lead-time bias?
Overestimation of survival duration due to earlier detection by screening instead of onset of clinical symptoms
AKA you think that screening increases survival, but actually it’s only because you pick up earlier (No change in mortality)
What is length-time bias?
Overestimation of survival duration due to relative excess of cases detected that are slowly progression
AKA you think you detect more cases because of screening, but actually it’s because the disease is slow progressing
What is need, demand and supply?
o Needs = Ability to benefit from an intervention
o Demand = What people ask for
o Supply = What is provided
What is health needs assessment?
Health needs assessment is a systematic method for reviewing the health issues facing a population, leading to agreed priorities and resource allocation that will improve health and reduce inequalities
Examples of needed and supplied but not demanded?
• Health promotion • GU contact tracing • MMR (For some parents) • Screening (Some) • CAMS smoking cessation services
Examples of needed but not demanded and not supplied?
- Treatment of child abusers
- Palliative care services
- Contraceptive services
Examples of needed and demanded but not supplied?
• Waiting lists • Evidence based gaps • New medications • Research Drug rehabilitation
Examples of supplied and demanded but not needed?
• Antibiotics for sore throat
• Cosmetic surgery
- Benzodiazepines for insomnia
Examples of needed, supplied and demanded?
• Operations of cataracts
• Free contraception
- insulin for DM
What is health needs?
- Need for health
- Concerns need in more general terms
e. g. measured using mortality, morbidity, socio-demographic measures
What is health care needs?
- Need for health care
- Much more specific
- Ability to benefit from health care
e. g. Depends on the potential of prevention, treatment and care services to remedy health problems
What are the different needs according to Bradshaw’s sociological perspective?
- Felt Need - Individual perceptions of variation from normal health
- Expressed Need - Individual seeks help to overcome variation in normal health (Demand)
- Normative need - Professional defines intervention appropriate for the expressed need
- Comparative need - Comparison between severity, range of interventions and costs
FENC
What are the three approaches for a health needs assessment?
- Epidemiological Approach - Top down view based on statistics
- Comparative approach - Compares 2 groups or populations
- Corporate approach - includes stakeholders
What are the problems in epidemiological health needs assessment approach?
- Required data may not be available
- Variable data quality
- Evidence may may be inadequate
- Does NOT consider felt needs of people
What are the problems in comparative health needs assessment approach?
- May be difficult to find a comparable population
- Variable quality of data
- Data may NOT be available
- May NOT yield what the most appropriate level of Provision or utilisation should be
What are the problems in corporate health needs assessment approach?
- Difficult to distinguish need from demand
- Groups may have vested interests
- May be influenced by political agendas
- Dominant personalities may have undue influence
What is the epidemiological health needs assessment approach?
- Define problem
- Size of problem - incidence / prevalence
- Services available - prevention / treatment / care
- Evidence base - effectiveness and cost-effectiveness
- Models of care - including quality and outcome measures
- Existing services - unmet need; services not needed
- Recommendations
What is the egalitarian principle?
Equal access to provide all care that is necessary and approrpaite to everyone
o Limitations = Finite resources
What is the maximising principle?
Criteria that maximises public utility
o Limitations = Who should decide this?