Environment, Health & Well-Being

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes on Environment, Health & Well-Being.

Global Health

Patterns of health, mortality, and morbidity that exist worldwide and change over time.

Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE)

How long a person can be expected to live in good health without significant disease or injury.

Non-communicable disease

Medical conditions that are not infectious, such as asthma, cancer, and heart disease.

Communicable diseases

Infectious conditions that can be passed from person-to-person, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and coronavirus.

Epidemiological Transition

A model describing how mortality rates change over time from infectious diseases to degenerative, non-communicable illnesses due to economic and social developments.

Climate and Topography

Two notable environmental factors that significantly impact health and the incidence of disease.

Ambient air pollution

Outdoor air pollution in both cities and rural areas causing fine particulate matter, increasing the risk of strokes, heart diseases, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases.

Household air pollution

Pollution from using polluting open fires or ovens fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung, and crop waste) and coal, exposing approximately 2.4 billion people to dangerous levels.

World Health Organization (WHO)

The leading global agency promoting good health, advising countries on vaccines, research, instruction, and assistance with clean water programs, and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases.

UNICEF

United Nations Children’s Fund

UNAIDS

A joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS

Malaria

A communicable (infectious) disease found in tropical areas, biologically spread by disease vectors - parasites carried by female mosquitoes.

Prevalence

The proportion of a population who have a specific characteristic in a given time period.

Seasonal incidence

The occurrence of malaria depending on physical factors, with the greatest incidence during and soon after the season of highest rainfall.

Asthma

A non-communicable (non-infectious) chronic (long-term) lung disease found in all countries of the world.

Mitigation

Reducing the severity, seriousness, or harmfulness of something.