SPHG 351: Public Health Foundations — Unit 2 Vocabulary

Vocabulary terms and definitions covering core epidemiological concepts, health equity principles, life course models, and case studies for SPHG 351 Unit 2.

Occurrence

The frequency of a health event in a population, typically measured through incidence or prevalence.

Burden

The overall impact of a health event on individuals, families, and society, encompassing health-related, financial, and quality-of-life losses.

Incidence

The rate of new cases arising in a population over a specified time period, reflecting the risk of developing a disease.

Prevalence

The total proportion of existing cases (both new and old) in a population at a given point or period in time, reflecting disease duration and overall population burden.

Population Denominators

Standardized population bases (such as cases per $100{,}000$ population) used to standardize measures and enable valid comparisons of disease risk across different places, demographic groups, or time periods.

Health Disparity (Inequality)

A simple measurable, empirical difference in health status between population groups (the empirical 'WHAT').

Health Inequity

A specific type of health difference that is systematic, unnecessary, avoidable, unfair, and rooted in social injustice (the mechanistic 'WHY').

Health Equity

The absence of unfair differences, ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to attain their full health potential as a core public health principle driven by human rights.

Justice (in Health)

The process of fixing structural systems to remove systemic barriers through upstream policy and institutional transformation.

Population Health Improvement vs. Equity Paradox

The phenomenon wherein interventions that improve overall average population health fail to reduce inequities or inadvertently widen them because higher-resourced groups access the benefits faster.

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)

Non-medical conditions in the environments where people are born, grow, live, work, play, worship, and age that shape health outcomes and quality of life.

Upstream Factors

Macro-level determinants of health, including governance, laws, economic structures, zoning policies, and systemic resource distribution.

Midstream Factors

Intermediate determinants of health, including living and working conditions, housing quality, food access, transit, and the physical environment.

Downstream Factors

Micro-level determinants of health, including individual health behaviors, biological risk factors, medical treatment, and clinical care.

Social Ecological Framework (SEF)

A framework based on the premise that health and behavior are produced through nested, interacting levels of influence (individual, family/network, neighborhood/city, and country/society/policy) rather than individual choice alone.

Life Course Perspective (LCP)

A framework emphasizing that health develops over time across life stages, with early life exposures significantly shaping long-term adult health trajectories.

Critical Period

A specific developmental window during which an exposure causes permanent, irreversible structural or biological impact on an organism.

Sensitive Period

A developmental time window during which an exposure exerts a stronger impact on health than at other times, but the resulting effects can still be partially modified later in life.

Chain of Risk ('Trigger Effect')

A life course temporal model characterized by a sequential cascade where one adverse exposure directly triggers another risk factor in a step-by-step sequence.

Accumulation of Risk ('Dose/Wear and Tear')

A life course temporal model involving the gradual buildup of adverse exposures over decades that progressively damages biological and organ systems.

Confounding

A distortion in the observed relationship between an exposure and an outcome caused by a third variable that is associated with both the exposure and the outcome.

Commercial and Corporate Determinants of Health

Corporate practices that influence health outcomes through products sold, workplace conditions and wages, marketing and social norms, and political lobbying or regulation.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

The article adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 that establishes the fundamental human right to an adequate standard of living for health and well-being.

Redlining

A discriminatory practice initiated under the National Housing Act of 1934 where minority neighborhoods were mapped and color-coded red ('hazardous') by the HOLC and FHA, systematically denying residents federal mortgage loans and institutional wealth generation.

The Latino Paradox

The epidemiological finding that newly arrived Latino immigrants with lower income and education levels display better cardiovascular and mental health than wealthier native-born Americans, protected by cohesive family networks and cultural social buffers.

Food Desert

A low-income geographic area where residents lack access to a supermarket within $1\text{ mile}$, commonly saturated with convenience stores offering high-fat, high-sugar processed foods.

Energy Policy Act of 2005 ('Cheney Exemption')

Federal legislation that exempted hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) operations from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.