NHPC BPH key terms

The personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that influence a person's health status, including income, education, housing, genetics, behaviour, and access to services. They explain why health differs between groups and are the main target of public health action.

The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, shaped by money, power, and resources. Examples include education, employment, housing, and social support. They produce avoidable differences in health between richer and poorer groups.

The absence of avoidable, unfair differences in health between groups of people. Achieving it means removing barriers such as cost, distance, discrimination, and poor service quality so that everyone can reach their full health potential.

A whole-of-society approach to health that aims for universal coverage through people-centred, first-contact services close to where people live, combined with community participation and action on the wider determinants of health, as set out in the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration.

The process of enabling people to increase control over, and improve, their health. It works through health public policy, supportive environments, community action, personal skills, and reorienting services, rather than through clinical treatment alone.

The 1986 WHO charter that defined health promotion and set out five action areas: building healthy public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills, and reorienting health services. It remains the foundational statement of modern health promotion practice.

Planned learning activities that give people the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to protect and improve their own health. It is one tool within health promotion and is most effective when combined with supportive environments and accessible services.

The degree to which a person can find, understand, judge, and use health information to make decisions and navigate services. Low health literacy is linked to poorer self-management, more hospital use, and worse outcomes, so services must communicate clearly.

A behaviour-change framework holding that action depends on perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. It is widely used to design messages about vaccination, screening, and preventive behaviours.

A behaviour-change model describing movement through pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and possible relapse. Interventions are matched to a person's current stage rather than assuming everyone is ready to act.

The number of new cases of a disease arising in a defined population during a specified period, usually expressed as a rate per population at risk. It measures how fast new disease occurs and is the key input for studying risk factors.

The proportion of a population that has a condition at a given point in time or during a period. It reflects both how often disease occurs and how long it lasts, so it is useful for planning service needs rather than for measuring risk.

The proportion of a defined group that develops illness after a common exposure, such as food at a gathering. It is a form of incidence used in outbreak investigations to compare illness rates between exposed and unexposed groups.

A standard set of criteria-clinical features, time, place, and person, with laboratory confirmation where available-used to decide whether a person counts as a case. Consistent definitions allow counts to be compared across settings and over time.

A disease that health workers and laboratories are legally required to report to public health authorities. Reporting triggers surveillance, investigation, and control measures, and provides the data used to monitor trends and detect outbreaks.

The continuous, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and timely dissemination of health data used for planning, implementing, and evaluating public health practice. Effective surveillance must lead to action, not merely data collection.

Sensitivity is the proportion of truly diseased people a test correctly identifies as positive; specificity is the proportion of truly healthy people it correctly identifies as negative. High sensitivity suits screening and ruling out disease; high specificity suits confirmation.

The probability that a person with a positive test result actually has the disease. It depends on test sensitivity and specificity and on how common the disease is in the tested population, so it falls when prevalence is low.

The ratio of the risk of an outcome in an exposed group to the risk in an unexposed group. A value of 1 means no association; values above 1 suggest increased risk. It is calculated in cohort studies and trials.

The ratio of the odds of exposure among cases to the odds of exposure among controls. It estimates relative risk when a disease is rare and is the standard measure in case-control studies.

Distortion of an exposure–outcome association by a third factor that is related to both and is not on the causal pathway. It can create, exaggerate, or hide a real effect and is addressed through design, restriction, matching, or statistical adjustment.

A systematic error in study design, measurement, or analysis that pushes results away from the truth in a consistent direction. Common types include selection, information, and recall bias, and unlike random error, bias is not reduced by increasing sample size.

Allocating study participants to intervention or control groups by chance, so that known and unknown confounders are distributed similarly between groups. It is the defining feature of a randomized controlled trial and supports causal inference.

A range of values, calculated from sample data, within which the true population value is likely to lie with a stated probability, commonly 95%. Narrower intervals indicate greater precision, and an interval excluding the null value suggests statistical significance.

The probability of observing a result at least as extreme as the one found if the null hypothesis were true. It indicates compatibility with the null hypothesis, not the size or importance of an effect, and is often misused.

The presumptive identification of unrecognized disease in apparently healthy people using tests applied rapidly. Effective screening requires a suitable disease, an acceptable and accurate test, and follow-up treatment for those found positive.

A model describing disease as the result of interaction between an agent, a susceptible host, and an environment. It guides outbreak investigation and prevention by showing where intervention can break the chain of causation.

Indirect protection of unvaccinated people that arises when a sufficiently high proportion of a population is immune, reducing transmission. The threshold varies by disease and is higher for very contagious infections such as measles.

The reduction in disease risk among vaccinated people compared with unvaccinated people, usually expressed as a percentage. It is calculated from attack rates in outbreak investigations or from randomized trials and informs immunization targets.

A system in which all people receive needed health services of good quality without suffering financial hardship, covering promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation. It concerns both service coverage and financial protection.

Out-of-pocket health payments that exceed a defined share of household income or capacity to pay, forcing cuts to other essentials or pushing families into poverty. It is a key indicator of how well a health financing system protects people.

A summary measure of population health that adds years of life lost to premature death to years lived with disability, weighted for severity. One DALY represents one lost year of healthy life and is used to compare disease burden.

The number of maternal deaths during a given period per 100,000 live births in the same period. It reflects the risk of dying once pregnant and is a sensitive indicator of health system quality and access to emergency obstetric care.

A health professional such as a midwife or doctor trained to manage normal labour and to recognize, manage, and refer complications. Their presence at birth is a core indicator of safe motherhood services and reduces maternal and newborn deaths.

Feeding an infant only breast milk, without water, formula, or other foods, for the first six months of life, with continued breastfeeding afterwards. It protects against infection and malnutrition and is a key child survival intervention.

Low weight for height, indicating recent and severe weight loss or failure to gain weight, often from acute food shortage or illness. It is measured by mid-upper arm circumference or weight-for-height z-scores and signals urgent nutritional risk.

Low height for age resulting from chronic undernutrition and repeated infection, usually before age two. It is largely irreversible after the early years and is associated with poorer cognitive development and school performance.

The interlinked services and behaviours that provide safe drinking water, safe disposal of human waste, and handwashing with soap. Failures in these areas are major causes of diarrhoeal disease, and improvements are among the most cost-effective public health measures.

A classification of household sanitation from open defecation through unimproved, shared, and limited facilities to safely managed services. It is used to monitor progress toward universal access to adequate and equitable sanitation.

Voluntary agreement to participate in research or treatment given after a person has received and understood relevant information about purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, and alternatives. It must be documented and can be withdrawn at any time.

The core values guiding public health and research conduct: respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. They help resolve tensions between individual rights and the collective good, for example in outbreak control measures.

The duty to keep personal health information private and to share it only with those who need it for care or public health purposes, with appropriate safeguards. Breach of confidentiality damages trust and is a professional and legal failing.

A regulatory or advisory maximum concentration of a workplace hazard, usually airborne, to which workers may be exposed over a defined period. Limits are set with safety margins but do not guarantee protection for every individual.

A ranked approach to reducing workplace and environmental hazards: eliminate, substitute, engineer, administratively control, then use personal protective equipment. Earlier steps are more reliable because they do not depend on individual behaviour.

Items worn to reduce exposure to hazards, such as gloves, masks, respirators, goggles, and gowns. It is the last line of defence, requires correct fitting and use, and is least effective when used alone.