Public Health 200 Midterm Exam with
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you will be able to explain what public health is, what distinguishes it from the other
health sciences, and what unique contributions it has to make to the health of the public
- CORRECT ANSWER-definition: public health is the set of activities a society
undertakes to monitor and improve the health of its collective membership
distinguishing features:
1. focus on preventing disease and injury
2. patient is entire community, not individuals
3. provider is society, not individual professionals
you will be able to identify the principal determinants of health and disease, as well as
the principal determinants of, and explanations for, inequalities in the health of groups
differentiated by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status - CORRECT ANSWER-
you will understand when (and why) governments should intervene in matters pertaining
to the health of the public and when (and why) they should not. you will be able to
describe the major formal organizational structures within the united states responsible
for monitoring and improving the public's health - CORRECT ANSWER-when:
1. risk to others
-mandatory vaccination, screening STDs and partner notification, treatment for STDs,
quarantine, laws forbidding the dumping of toxic waste
2. incompetent persons
-children & mentally-ill, civil commitment, control financial affairs, newborn screening,
-rationale for interference with autonomy: make those decisions a person would have to
make if he/she were competent
3. risk to self
-the most controversial, mandatory motorcycle helmet and seatbelt laws, gambling
prohibitions, fluoridation of drinking water, taxes and restriction on advertising of
cigarettes & alcoholic beverages
why:
1. national government
-commerce power, power to tax and spend
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2. state government
-10th amendment, police powers
-center for disease control: control & prevent human disease, genetics, injury &
violence, & environmental health
-national
you will be able to describe the basic approaches and purposes of the two major
analytical methods of public health, epidemiology and biostatistics, without achieving
mastery of the methods - CORRECT ANSWER-Epidemiology: the study of the
distribution and determinants of disease
-disease frequency & distribution: person, place, and time
-disease determinants: biological, environment, social
-how to study disease patterns: experiments, risk assessment, statistical analysis,
surveys, & interviews
-goal: use evidence to control and prevent the spread of disease
-role: assessment function of public health, comparisons of rates and distributions of
disease gives clues about the determinants of disease
-cross-sectional study: identify sample, observe disease status and exposure
simultaneously
-randomized controlled trial: identify sample, random assignment, compare outcomes
-cohort study: identify sample, observe exposure, compare outcome
-case control studies: compare exposure histories, identify sample, observe disease
status
Biostatistics:
-prevalence: usually reported as a percentage
-a confidence interval is a range of values within which the true result probably falls
-the p-value expresses the probability that the observed result could have occurred by
chance alone
-confidence intervals: represent the uncertainty around the means
-differences can be statistically significant, but not meaningful
you will be able to explain the biomedical basis of major infectious and chronic diseases
and congenital abnormalities, again without developing detailed expertise on these
subjects - CORRECT ANSWER-
you will be able to identify the principal social and behavioral determinants of health and
demonstrate how they influence the most important behavior-related health problems of
the day - CORRECT ANSWER-race: a social grouping of people who have similar
physical or social characteristics that are generally considered by society as forming a
distinct group, but race is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
ethnicity: grouping based on common descent and culture
people of color: racial and ethnic minority groups
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