Core 1 - Health for Individuals and Communities
What you must understand
Health is more than the absence of disease. Be able to move between the biomedical, lifestyle/behavioural and social models of health and explain why the social model (socioeconomic, cultural, environmental determinants) explains inequities that individual behaviour cannot. Learn the Ottawa Charter action areas (build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop personal skills, reorient health services) and distinguish health promotion from disease prevention (primary, secondary, tertiary). Know the difference between equity and equality, and between incidence and prevalence. Be able to interpret a simple health indicator (life expectancy, mortality rate, DALY) and explain what it does and does not measure.
Traps in questions
- Confusing equity with equality: equality gives everyone the same; equity allocates according to need.
- Describing the Ottawa Charter as a list of programs rather than as strategies for action.
- Treating social determinants as individual choices ("they just need to exercise more").
- Mixing up incidence (new cases over a period) and prevalence (all existing cases at a point).
- Forgetting that prevention levels describe when action occurs, not who delivers it.
Worked rule of thumb
When asked to "explain a health inequity", use the chain: determinant → exposure → risk → outcome → strategy. Example: low income (determinant) limits access to affordable fresh food (exposure), raising diet-related chronic disease risk (risk), producing higher rates of type 2 diabetes in that group (outcome); a supportive-environment strategy such as subsidised school breakfast programs addresses the exposure rather than blaming individuals.