Determinants of health and measuring health

Question 1

What are the determinants of health

Answer 1

1) Income and social status
2) Employment and working conditions
3) Education and literacy
4) Childhood experiences
5) physical environments
6) Social supports and coping skills
7) healthy behaviors
8) Access to the health services
9) Biology and genetic endowment
10) Gender
11) culture
12) race/racism

Question 2

Income and social status

Answer 2

• health status improves at each step up the income and social hierarchy
• high income determines living conditions such as safe housing and ability to buy sufficient good food

Question 3

Employment and working conditions

Answer 3

unemployment, underemployment, stressful or unsafe work are associated with poorer health

Question 4

Education and literacy

Answer 4

health status improves with level of education

education improves people’s ability to access and understand information to help keep them healthy

Question 5

Childhood experiences

Answer 5

experiences from conception to age 6 have the most important influence of any time in the life cycle on the connecting and sculpting of the brains neurons

Question 6

Physical environment

Answer 6

At certain levels of exposure, contaminants in our air, water, food and soil can cause a variety of adverse health effects, including cancer, birth defects, respiratory illness and gastrointestinal ailments

Question 7

Social supports and coping skills

Answer 7

support from families, friends and communities is associated with better health

Question 8

Healthy behaviors

Answer 8

There is a growing recognition that personal life “choices” are greatly influenced by the socioeconomic environments in which people live, learn and work and play

Question 9

Access to health services

Answer 9

if you are sick and cannot access services, it has a negative influence on health

Question 10

Biology and genetic endowments

Answer 10

the basic biology and organic make-up of the human body are a fundamental determinant of health

Question 11

Gender

Answer 11

gendered norms influence the health system’s practices and priorities. Many health issues are a function of gender-based social status or roles

Question 12

Culture

Answer 12

some persons or groups may face additional health risks due to a socio-economic environment, which is largely determined by dominant cultural values

Question 13

Racism

Answer 13

Canada remains a nation where a person’s colour, religion, culture or ethnic origin are determinants of health that result in inequities in social inclusion, economic outcomes, personal health and access to and quality of health and social services

Question 14

why is burden of disease data important

Answer 14

• leading causes of illness, disability, and death in the world
• variations in these causes by age, sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status
• Changes over time and how these causes might change in the future

Question 15

What are two ways to measure the burdens of disease

Answer 15

HALE and DALY (health gap measure)

Question 16

What is group 1

Answer 16

Communicable, maternal, perinatal conditions and nutritional conditions

Question 17

What is group 2

Answer 17

non-communicable

Question 18

What are the leading causes of deaths and dalys

Answer 18

low income countries have a unique patterns of death and Daly’s, dominated by group 1 causes

Question 19

What is group 3

Answer 19

injuries

Question 20

Burden of death and disease within countries

Answer 20

• rural populations are less healthy than urban populations
• disadvantaged ethnic minorities are less healthy than majority population
• females suffer from a number of conditions related to their relatively disadvantaged social positions
• poor people are less healthy than wealthier people
• Uneducated people will be less health than those better educated

Question 21

population aging

Answer 21

• elderly support ratio - ratio between the number of people aged 15 to 64 years, compared to the number of people over 65
• aging population shift in the elderly support ratio has profound implications for: the burden of disease, health expenditures, how health care will be financed

Question 22

Urbanization

Answer 22

the majority of the global population lives in urban areas
Urbanization puts pressure on urban infrastructure
gaps in infrastructure can have substantial negative consequences for health

Question 23

the demographic divide

Answer 23

• highest income countries have low fertility, declining populations, and aging populations
• Lowest-income countries have high-fertility, although it is slowly declining

Question 24

Demographic transition

Answer 24

shift in pattern of high fertility and high mortality to low fertility and low mortality, with population growth in between

Question 25

The epidemiological transition

Answer 25

first, high fluctuating mortality, related to poor health conditions, epidemics and famine
Then, progressive decline in mortality as epidemics become less frequent