1 - Health Flashcards
(16 cards)
What are the various definitions of heatlh?
The absence of illness, being in a functional state(allows leeway for gradations in health), wellbeing
How can health be measured?
Individual v population level, death/disease/physical indicators, well being/satisfaction, influences on health
What are some indicators of mortality?
Infant Mortality Rate(IMR), longevity(surviving past average age of death)
What are some indicators of morbidity?
Quality-adjusted life years(QALYs)/disability-adjusted life years(DALYs), incidence(number of new cases of a disease that develop in a population at a particular point in time), prevalance(a measure of the proportion of the population that has a disease at a particular point in time)
What are some physical indicators of health?
Body Mass Index(BMI), obesity, blood pressure
What are some mental indicators of health?
Psychiatric reviews, engagement with the world etc
What are some examples of influences on health?
Healthy behaviour(exercise rates/diet/smoking etc), environmental quality(sanitation, access to safe water, air/noise pollution), access to healthcafe(doctors per person, healthcare uptake, medical technology), quality of life, HDI
What are some examples of health data?
Burial records, civil records of death, physical indicators
What is spatial epidemiology?
The study of the determinants, occurrence, and distribution of health and disease in a defined population
What are some examples of spatial epidemiology?
John Snow finding out that cholera was water-borne by mapping deaths - he studied the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak and found that cholera was transmitted via contaminated water & Willima Farr establishing urban-rural differences in mortality by comparing urban areas with rural ‘healthy districts’
What was medical geography like in the 20th century?
Spatial epidemiology(spatial patterns in disease and mortality, using methods such as mapping, regression, spatial statistics etc), health services research(spatial perspectives on planning, help-seeking behaviour etc, mainly quantitative)
What was the cultural turn from medical to health geography?
An increasing focus on culture and meaning and away from positivism and causality - geography of health proposed to incorporate the construction of issues of plate, identity and health - this broadened the agenda rather than a fundamental change and there is still general recognition that quantitative and qualitative provide complementary perspectives and both remain strong parts of the discipline
How does context influence health?
Context affects health because there are aspects of place that matter for health over and above the effects of the characteristics of the inhabitants(e.g. physical environment, social capital)
How does composition affect health?
Composition means that places with poor health only have poor health because the population is composed of people with characteristics asssociated with poor health - the health of that place can be seen as the sum of the health of all the people in the place
What are some recent developments in health geography?
Locality studies, relational geographies(understanding human geographies that emphasizes the co-constitution and entanglement of different phenomena, often distant ones), increased attention to theory and the mechanisms through which place affects health
What are some enduring themes within health geography?
Continued focus on illness and mortality, globalisation and urbanisation, context and composition, quantitative and qualitative methods, social and spatial inequalities in health
