Public Health - Chronic Disease Flashcards
Public health surveillance
The ongoing, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data essential to planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data to those responsible for prevention and control
What does surveillance allow us to do
Describe the burden of or potential for disease
Detect sudden changes in disease occurrence and distribution
Monitor changes in disease prevalence over time
Monitor changes in health behaviours
Identify priorities
Inform programmes and polices
Evaluate prevention and control efforts
Develop hypotheses and stimulate research
Steps involved in surveillance
Detect Code Analyse Disseminate Action
Incidence
The rate of occurrence of new cases
Prevalence
The proportion of cases in the population at a given time
Incidence vs prevalence
Incidence conveys info about the risk of contracting the disease, whereas prevalence indicates how widespread the disease is
Mortality rate
A measure of frequency of occurrence of death in a defined population during a specific interval
Case fatality
A measure of deaths assigned to a spp cause during a given time interval, relative to the total number of cases
Endemic
The habitual; presence (or usual occurrence) of a disease within given geographical area
Outbreak
A sudden increase in occurrences of a diseases
Epidemic
A serious outbreak in a single community, population or region
Pandemic
An epidemic which is spreading around the world, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, across many countries
International Standard of Diseases (ICD)
Standardised set of codes to record diagnosis of a condition
Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD)
Largest study in the world that summarises global surveillance data (identifies world biggest health problems, how these are being tackled and how is economical best to support these interventions)
Disseminate
Spread the information to the appropriate people
Epidemic curves
A graphical representation of the number of cases over time
Types of epidemic curves
Point Source Outbreak
Continuous Source Outbreak
Propagated Source Outbreak
Plots no. cases against time
Point Source Outbreak epidemic curve
Has only one single peak e.g. after exposure to contaminated food
Continuous Source Outbreak epidemic curve
Curve has a plateau
Source of outbreak is usually quite common e.g. contaminated water source
Propagated Source Outbreak epidemic curve
Curve has multiple peak e.g. COVID-19
Fatality rates
Measure of severity of disease
% of people who die after being diagnosed w/ a certain disease within a certain period of time
