CPH (Other exams) flashcards
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- Incidence rate
- Number of new cases of a disease occurring in a population during a specified period divided by the person-time at risk; measures the speed of new disease occurrence.
- Prevalence
- Proportion of a population that has a disease at a given point in time; reflects both incidence and duration of disease and is used for burden estimation.
- Attack rate
- Proportion of a defined at-risk group that develops illness during an outbreak; a form of cumulative incidence used in acute outbreak settings.
- Sensitivity
- Proportion of people with disease who test positive; a highly sensitive test has few false negatives and is useful for ruling out disease.
- Specificity
- Proportion of people without disease who test negative; a highly specific test has few false positives and is useful for confirming disease.
- Positive predictive value
- Proportion of people with a positive test who actually have disease; it rises as disease prevalence in the tested population increases.
- Negative predictive value
- Proportion of people with a negative test who are truly disease-free; it rises as disease prevalence in the tested population decreases.
- Relative risk
- Ratio of disease risk in exposed persons to risk in unexposed persons; used in cohort studies to quantify association strength.
- Odds ratio
- Ratio of odds of exposure in cases to odds of exposure in controls; used in case-control studies and approximates relative risk when disease is rare.
- Attributable risk
- Difference in disease risk between exposed and unexposed groups; estimates excess disease burden associated with an exposure in absolute terms.
- Herd immunity threshold
- Proportion of a population that must be immune to interrupt transmission, calculated as 1 minus 1 divided by the basic reproduction number.
- Basic reproduction number
- Average number of secondary infections caused by one infectious case in a fully susceptible population; denoted R0 and used to gauge outbreak potential.
- Crude mortality rate
- Total deaths in a population during a period divided by mid-year population, usually multiplied by 100,000; unadjusted for age composition.
- Age-adjusted mortality
- Mortality rate recalculated using a standard age distribution to remove confounding by age when comparing populations with different age structures.
- Confounding
- Distortion of an exposure-outcome association by a third variable related to both exposure and outcome but not on the causal pathway.
- Selection bias
- Systematic error arising when study participants or groups differ from the target population in ways related to exposure and outcome.
- Lead-time bias
- Apparent survival gain from earlier diagnosis by screening when the time of death is unchanged; inflates survival without extending life.
- Core public health functions
- Three foundational roles of public health: assessment of community health, policy development, and assurance of needed services.
- Ten Essential Services
- Framework of public health activities spanning monitoring, diagnosing, informing, mobilizing, policy, enforcement, linkage, workforce, evaluation, and research.
- Primary prevention
- Interventions that prevent disease onset before it occurs, such as immunization, water fluoridation, and tobacco control policies.
- Secondary prevention
- Early detection and prompt treatment of disease at a presymptomatic stage, such as screening programs and case finding.
- Tertiary prevention
- Interventions after disease has occurred that reduce complications, disability, and mortality, such as rehabilitation and chronic disease management.
- Cost-effectiveness analysis
- Comparison of interventions by cost per unit of health outcome gained, often expressed as cost per quality-adjusted life year.
- Quality-adjusted life year
- Metric combining length of life and health-related quality of life; one year in perfect health equals 1.0 QALY.
- Outbreak investigation steps
- Sequence including verifying diagnosis, confirming outbreak, defining cases, generating hypotheses, implementing control measures, and communicating findings.
- Notifiable disease reporting
- Legal requirement for clinicians and laboratories to report specified conditions to public health authorities for surveillance and response.
- Surveillance system
- Ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and dissemination of health data used to guide public health action and program evaluation.
- Policy analysis
- Systematic comparison of policy alternatives on dimensions such as effectiveness, cost, equity, feasibility, and political acceptability.
- Health in All Policies
- Approach ensuring that health consequences are considered across sectors such as housing, transportation, and education during policy development.
- Risk communication
- Exchange of information about health hazards using transparency, timeliness, and consistency to support informed public decisions.
- Determinants of health
- Factors including biology, behavior, social environment, physical environment, and health services that shape population health outcomes.
- Social determinants of health
- Conditions of birth, growth, living, working, and aging that influence health, including income, education, housing, and neighborhood safety.