HSCI 488 - Study Guide #2 Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes for HSCI 488, covering public health surveillance, prevention, screening, and outbreaks.

Public Health Surveillance

Ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data.

Notifiable Diseases

Diseases that are important to public health, typically infectious diseases that put the health of the population in danger.

Passive Surveillance

Medical practitioners and diagnostic labs report notifiable diseases on a case-by-case basis to state/local health agencies.

Active Surveillance

Public health agency staff contacting health care providers, labs, and health clinics to identify potential cases.

Syndromic Surveillance

Uses symptom info to alert public health officials to a potential problem.

Primary Prevention

Aims to stop disease before it occurs, using personal and community efforts.

Secondary Prevention

Aims to reduce the progress of disease through early detection/action.

Screening

Method that can identify unrecognized diseases/conditions; identifies diseases before symptoms are present.

Tertiary Prevention

Focuses on reducing impairment/harm and helping people manage long-term health problems/chronic injuries.

Sensitivity

Ability of a test to correctly identify cases.

Specificity

Ability of a test to correctly identify non-cases.

Positive Predictive Value

Proportion of those with a positive screening who are cases.

Negative Predictive Value

Proportion of those with a negative screening who are NOT cases.

Overdiagnosis

Occurs when doctors find evidence of a disease through screening that is unlikely to get any worse or may go away on its own.

Overtreatment

Unneeded treatments that result from overdiagnosis due to screening.

Lead Time Bias

Overestimation of survival time that occurs when screening detects a disease earlier in its course than if screening had not been performed.

Length Bias

Overestimation of survival duration among screening-detected cases, caused by the excess of slowly progressing cases.

Healthy Volunteer Bias

Occurs because people who are healthier, health-conscious, or have medical insurance are more likely to be screened.

Surveillance Bias

In a monitored population, disease ascertainment is better than in the general population because practitioners are actively looking for disease.

Outbreak

A much higher than expected number of disease cases in a place/time.

Cluster

Aggregation of uncommon events in an area in amounts that are perceived to be greater than what is expected by chance.

Common Vehicle Spread

Spread of a disease through a shared source (air, water, food, or drugs).

Serial Transfer Transmission

Transmission of disease from HUMAN to HUMAN, HUMAN to ANIMAL, or HUMAN ENVIRONMENT to HUMAN in a sequence.

Epidemiological Curve

Graph that shows the distribution of cases of disease by time and onset of disease.

Common Source Epidemics

Occurs when there is a clustering of cases of disease that occurs within a short time due to exposure of persons or animals to a shared or common source of infection.

Point Source Epidemic

The exposed developing the disease very quickly, often over 1 incubation period.

Continuous Source Epidemic

When exposure to a source is prolonged over an extended period of time.

Propagated Epidemics

Infections are transmitted from one infected person to another; transmission can be through direct or indirect routes.