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Description
Flashcards by louisa.slinger4825, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by louisa.slinger4825
over 11 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is epidemiology? | Epidemiology is the study of disease among specific groups within society. |
| What is the role of epidemiology? | Epidemiology provides information for planning and decision making regarding health expenditure, health priority areas and health promotion initiatives from local, state and national perspectives. It can give an overall conclusion about the health status of a specific population. |
| Define the 4 measures of epidemiology | Mortality:measure indicating how many people died in a certain population, from a certain disease over a certain time period. Morbidity:measure indicating the prevalence and incidence of a certain disease or sickness in a specific population. Infant Mortality:measure indicating the number of infant deaths per 1000 live deaths in the first year of their life. Life Expectancy: The number of years a person is predicted to live. |
| What can epidemiology tell us? | Epidemiology can measure health status, it can also: Monitor the major causes of sickness and death to identify any emerging issues or inequalities, identify areas of need so prevention and treatment interventions can be targeted, determine priority health areas for the allocation of Government funding, monitor the use of health care services and facilities, evaluate the effectiveness of any prevention and treatment programs. |
| Who uses these measures? | All 3 levels of Government, organisations such as Cancer Council, individual consumers, manufacturers of health products, Australian bureau of statistics, Medicare (health insurance) and RTA |
| Do they measure everything about health status? | No, epidemiology is simply the study of the patterns of health not total health; it fails to state various things: It doesn't show significant variations in health status among subgroups, it doesn't evaluate the quality of life e.g. disability, cant provide the whole health picture, fails to explain why these health inequities exist, doesn't account for the determinants that shape health, analyse current trends in life expectancy, major causes of morbidity and mortality and compare males and females. |
| Current trends in life expectancy | Has persistently increased over the past 125 years. Females have a higher life expectancy than males and about 20 years more than Aboriginals. |
| Current trends in morbidity | Rates for most major health conditions are decreasing, when these conditions do occur survival rates are increasing. |
| Current trends for mortality | Death rates have declined for both males and females in all age groups within the last two decades. |
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