Public Health Flashcards
What is Prevalence?
The number of existing cases at a particular point in time (can be expressed as a percentage or per e.g. 100,000)
What is the stages of change model?
Not thinking (pre contemplation) –> Thinking about changing (contemplation) –> Preparing to change –> Action –> Maintenance –> Stable/Changed Lifestyle or Relapse
What is Primary prevention?
The aim of primary prevention is to prevent a disease becoming established. It aims to reduce or eliminate exposures and behaviours that are known to increase an individuals risk of developing a disease
What is Secondary Prevention?
The aim of secondary prevention is to detect early disease and slow down or halt the progress of the disease
What is Tertiary prevention?
Once Disease is established, detectable and symptomatic, tertiary prevention aims to reduce the complications or severity of disease by offering appropriate treatments or interventions
Lifestyle changes to prevent CHD?
SNAP
Smoking
Nutrition
Alcohol
Physical activity
What is a standard unit of alcohol?
10ml/8g of ethanol
How do you calculate how many units of alcohol are in a drink?
(% alcohol by volume x amount of liquid in millimetres) /1,000
What are the CAGE questions for alcohol dependency?
- Ever felt you should Cut down?
- Been annoyed by people telling you to cut down?
- Do you feel quilty about how much you drink?
- Eye opener: ever had a drink first think in the morning?
What is the doctrine of Dual effect?
If you administer a drug to relieve pain in doses that you know may be fatal, then provided your intention is not to shorten life but to relieve pain, the administration is not unlawful.
Normally, if you carry out an action knowing that X is a likely consequence of that act then the law regards you as intending to cause X.
What are the four principles of medical ethics?
Autonomy
Beneficence
Non-maleficence
Justice
What is Utilitarianism?
An act is evaluated solely in terms of its consequences. It acts to maximise good e.g. killing one to save many
What is Deontology?
The theory that the features of the act themselves determine worthiness
What is Virtue ethics?
These focus on the character of the person, integrating reason and emotion.
What is the PICO format?
- Population
- Intervention
- Comparator
- Outcome
When can you reject the null hypothesis?
When the P value is very small (less than 0.05)
Define epigenetics?
The expression of a genome depends on the environment
Define Allostasis?
The same as homeostasis
The stability through change of our physiological systems to adapt rapidly to change in environment
Define Allostatic load?
The long-term overtaxation of our physiological systems leading to impaired health (stress)
Define Salutogenesis?
Favourable physiological changes secondary to experiences which promote health and healing
What criteria should be used for prescribing antibiotics to someone with a sore throat?
CENTOR criteria
FeverPain score
Define Public Health?
The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organised efforts of society
What are the CENTOR criteria?
- Tonsillar exudate
- Absence of cough
- Tender or large cervical lymphadenopathy
- Fever
What are the three domains of public health?
- Health improvement
- Health protection
- Improving services
What are the key concerns of public health?
- Inequalities in health
- Wider determinants of health
- Prevention
What needs to be done/performed before a health intervention is made?
A health needs assessment
What is a health needs assessment?
- A systematic method for reviewing the health issues facing a population
- Leading to agreed priorities and resource allocation that will improve health and reduce inequaltities
What are the 3 different approaches of health needs assessments?
- Epidemiological
- Comparative
- Corporate
Define need?
Ability to benefit from an intervention
What is a health need and how is it measured?
- A need for health
- Measured using- Mortality, morbidity, socio-demographic measures
What are the 4 sociological perspectives of need?
- Felt need - individuals 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 cost
What does an epidemiological approach to a health needs assessment involve?
- Define problem
- Look at the size of the problem – incidence/prevelance
- 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 are the advantages of an epidemiological HNA?
- Uses existing data
- Provides data on disease incidence/mortality/morbidity etc.
- Can evaluate services by trends over time
What are the disadvantages of an epidemiological HNA?
- Quality of data variable
- Data collected may not be the data required
- Does not consider the felt needs or opinions/experiences of the people affected
What does a comparative approach to a health needs assessment involve?
Compares the services received by a population (or subgroup) with others:
- Spacial
- Social (age, gender, class, ethnicity)
What does the corporate approach to a health needs assessment involve?
- Ask the local population what their health needs are
- Uses focus groups, interviews, public meetings etc.
- Wide variety of stakeholders e.g. teachers, healthcare professionals, social workers, charity workers, local businesses, council workers, politicians
What is meant by the prevention paradox?
- A preventative measure which brings much benefit to the population often offers little to each participating individual
- i.e. it’s about screening a large number of people to help a small number of people
What is screening?
- A process which picks out apparently well people who are at risk of a disease, in the hope of catching the disease at its early stage
- NOT a diagnostic process – simply a means of assessing risk and catching diseases in their early stage
What is the sensitivity of a screening test and how do you calculate it?
The proportion of people with the disease who are correctly identified by the screening test
True positive / (true ive + false negative)
What is the specificity of screening and how is it calculated?
The proportion of people without the disease that are correctly excluded by the screening test
True negative / (true negative + false positive)
What is the positive predicted value and how is it calculated?
The proportion of people with a positive test result who actually have the disease
True positive / (true positive + false positive)