FMSC 310: Maternal, Child, and Family Health — Exam 1 Vocabulary

Vocabulary practice cards covering maternal, child, and family health (MCH), epidemiology, historical milestones, health disparities, the life course framework, reproductive justice, and infertility.

Maternal, Child, and Family Health (MCH)

The promotion of the health and well-being of all women, children, adolescents, fathers, parents, and families, with particular attention to disadvantaged and vulnerable populations.

Health (WHO Definition)

A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, as defined in the 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization.

Public Health

The art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts of society.

William Foege's Surveillance Principle

The public health principle established in 1976 asserting that the sole purpose of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating health data is to control disease, and that resources should never be consumed unless public health action follows.

Ignaz Semmelweis

A 19th-century Hungarian physician known as the 'Defender of Motherhood' who demonstrated that maternal puerperal fever infections and deaths could be drastically prevented by requiring medical personnel to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution.

Children's Bureau

A federal agency established by Congress under the Act of 1912 (P.L. 62-116) following the 1909 White House Conference, tasked with investigating and reporting on infant mortality, birth registration, orphanages, and the welfare of children nationwide.

Lillian Wald

A public health reformer who in 1903 advocated for the creation of the Children's Bureau, famously questioning why the federal government spent resources tracking agricultural crops while lacking a dedicated bureau to oversee the nation's 'crop of children.'

Infant Mortality

The death of a live-born infant before reaching their first birthday (under age one year).

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)

The number of infant deaths under age one year divided by the total number of live births in the population, calculated as: $\text{IMR} = \frac{\text{\# of infant deaths}}{\text{\# of live births in the population}}$

Maternal Mortality

The death of a woman while pregnant or within $42$ days of the termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but excluding accidental or incidental causes.

Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR)

The number of maternal pregnancy-related deaths divided by the number of live births in the population, typically reported per $100{,}000$ live births.

CDC Hear Her Campaign

A CDC Division of Reproductive Health initiative created to increase awareness of urgent maternal warning signs during and after pregnancy, empower women to speak up, and facilitate responsive clinical communication between patients and healthcare providers.

Birth Plan

A structured communication tool used by expectant parents to outline preferences regarding birth settings, medical attendants, labor support, delivery positions, and pain management strategies.

Monozygotic Twins

Identical twins that develop from the cleavage and division of a single fertilized ovum (zygote), sharing identical DNA.

Dizygotic Twins

Fraternal twins that develop when two separate ova are independently fertilized by two separate sperm cells during the same cycle.

Health Disparity

A systematic, plausibly avoidable health difference that adversely affects socially disadvantaged groups, rooted in ethical and human rights considerations.

Social Disadvantage

Unfavorable social, economic, or political conditions that groups of people systematically experience based on their relative position within social and institutional hierarchies.

Equality

A resource allocation approach where every individual or group receives the exact same inputs and resources, regardless of existing differences in need or background disadvantages.

Health Equity

The attainment of the highest level of health for all people, which requires distributing resources proportionally according to specific individual or group needs to eliminate avoidable inequalities.

Justice (in Health Equity Frameworks)

The structural resolution of health inequities achieved when underlying institutional and systemic barriers are dismantled so that equal access occurs without requiring special individual supports or accommodations.

Life Course Framework

A multidisciplinary public health model emphasizing that health trajectories are continually shaped across the lifespan by historical, socio-environmental, and biological exposures from preconception through adulthood.

Early Programming Mechanism

A life course mechanism positing that specific sensitive and critical developmental windows (such as embryonic development or early childhood) are particularly vulnerable to adverse exposures or especially responsive to protective interventions.

Cumulative Risk Mechanism

A life course mechanism positing that repeated, sustained exposures to negative social, economic, or environmental conditions (such as persistent poverty or chronic discrimination) accumulate over time to undermine long-term health.

Fetal Origins of Adult Disease Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposing that adverse nutritional and environmental exposures experienced in utero program fetal physiology and elevate the risk of chronic adult conditions, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Dutch Famine (1944–1945)

A historical natural experiment during World War II showing that acute prenatal maternal undernutrition resulted in low-birthweight infants who faced significantly elevated rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in adulthood, with observed multigenerational epigenetic effects.

Epigenetics

The study of heritable changes in gene expression and cellular function that occur without any alteration to the underlying DNA nucleotide sequence.

Weathering Hypothesis

A framework developed by Dr. Arline Geronimus positing that chronic social, economic, and racial stress leads to premature physiological wear-and-tear, contributing to early health deterioration and poor pregnancy outcomes among marginalized populations.

Allostatic Load

The cumulative biological burden and wear-and-tear on physiological regulatory systems resulting from repeated or sustained adaptation to chronic environmental and psychological stress.

Institutionalized Racism

Differential access to goods, services, and opportunities within society codified into institutional policies, practices, laws, and structural customs.

Personally Mediated Racism

Prejudice and discrimination manifested at the interpersonal level through differential assumptions, negative attitudes, and discriminatory behaviors based on race.

Internalized Racism

The acceptance and subconscious absorption of societal racial stereotypes and stigmatized beliefs by members of marginalized racial groups regarding their own worth and abilities.

Public Health Approach

A four-step scientific sequence used to address population health problems: Surveillance (What is the problem?), Risk Factor Identification (What is the cause?), Intervention Evaluation (What works?), and Implementation (How do you do it?).

Descriptive Epidemiology

The observational study of disease patterns in populations focused on characterizing health events by 'who, what, when, and where.'

Analytic Epidemiology

The scientific study of the causal determinants, mechanisms, and risk factors of diseases in populations focused on testing hypotheses to explain 'how and why' health conditions occur.

Public Health Surveillance

The ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of information to decision-makers.

Folic Acid

A synthetic form of vitamin $B_9$ crucial for cellular division, DNA and RNA synthesis, and DNA repair, which drastically reduces the risk of congenital neural tube defects when taken prior to and during early pregnancy.

Neural Tube Defects (NTDs)

Severe congenital birth defects of the central nervous system, including spina bifida and anencephaly, caused by the incomplete closure of the embryonic neural tube during early gestation.

Anencephaly

A fatal neural tube defect characterized by the failure of the cranial end of the neural tube to close, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp.

Folic Acid Fortification Mandate of 1998

A federal policy implemented by the U.S. FDA requiring enriched cereal grain flours to be fortified with folic acid, resulting in a swift, population-level decline in neural tube defects.

Leading Health Indicators (LHIs)

A small, curated subset of high-priority core objectives in Healthy People 2030 (comprising $23$ indicators, approximately $25\%$ of which focus on MCH) selected to drive national action on major public health threats.

Reproductive Rights

The basic legal right of all individuals and couples to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing, and timing of their children, and to have the information, education, and healthcare means to do so, established at the 1994 Cairo ICPD.

Reproductive Justice

A human rights framework established in 1994 by Black women combining reproductive rights with social justice, asserting the rights to have children, not have children, parent children in safe and healthy environments, and maintain bodily autonomy.

Mistimed Pregnancy

A subcategory of unintended pregnancy wherein a pregnancy is desired by the individual, but occurs sooner than planned.

Unwanted Pregnancy

A subcategory of unintended pregnancy wherein a pregnancy occurs when no child, or no additional children, are desired at any point in the future.

Interpregnancy Interval (IPI)

The elapsed duration between a live birth and the conception of the subsequent pregnancy; short intervals ($<18$ months) are correlated with higher risks of preterm birth, low birthweight, maternal blood transfusions, and postpartum depression.

Contraceptive Desert

A geographic county or region where women in need of publicly funded contraception lack reasonable access to a healthcare clinic that provides the full range of contraceptive methods.

Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC)

Highly effective, provider-administered contraceptive methods that offer multi-year pregnancy prevention and are fully reversible upon removal, specifically intrauterine devices (IUDs) and subdermal implants.

Medication Abortion

A two-drug pharmaceutical regimen used to terminate an early pregnancy, consisting of mifepristone (which blocks progesterone) followed by misoprostol (which induces uterine contractions and cervical emptying).

Spontaneous Abortion

The naturally occurring loss of an embryo or fetus prior to viability, commonly referred to as a miscarriage.

Title X

A federal grant program enacted in 1970 that provides dedicated funding for voluntary, comprehensive family planning and preventative reproductive healthcare services, specifically prioritizing low-income populations.

Relf v. Weinberger (1974)

A landmark federal court decision that prohibited the use of federal funds for coerced or involuntary sterilizations, establishing federal safeguards and consent standards to protect poor and minority welfare recipients.

Madrigal v. Quilligan (1978)

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed by ten Mexican-American women against Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center physicians who coerced them into postpartum tubal ligations while under labor distress, which spurred standard informed-consent forms in multiple languages.

Infertility

A disease of the reproductive system clinically defined as the inability to achieve pregnancy after $12$ months of regular, unprotected intercourse, or after $6$ months for women aged $35$ years and older.

Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)

A fertility procedure involving the direct laboratory washing and concentrated placement of sperm into the uterine cavity, bypassing the cervix around the time of ovulation.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)

All fertility treatments and procedures in which both eggs and sperm are handled in vitro outside the body (such as IVF, which represents over $99\%$ of U.S. ART); it excludes procedures handling only sperm (e.g., IUI) or ovarian stimulation drugs alone.

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

An assisted reproductive procedure where mature oocytes are surgically retrieved from the ovaries, fertilized with sperm in a laboratory, cultured into embryos, and transferred into the uterus.

Bragdon v. Abbott (1998)

A United States Supreme Court ruling determining that human reproduction constitutes a 'major life activity' under the statutory protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Griswald V. Conneticuit (1965)

Married couples access to contraception

Esinwald V. Baird (1972)

Unmarried individuals (women) are allowed to have contraception

Roe V. Wade (1973)

Constitutionalized access to birth control and abortion

Dobbs Vs Jackson (2022)

Constitutional resetriction of abortion, allowed to ruling of the states — overturning Roe V. Wade