Lesson 1 CPH 225

• Health is defined as the complete status of physical, mental, and social well-being and not only the absence of disease or infirmity.
• A healthy person is leading a socially and economically active life.
• Health is the presence of a positive capacity to lead energetically.
• An operational definition of health is a condition or quality of the human organism expressing the adequate functioning of the organism in given conditions, genetic or environmental.
• The ecological definition of health states that health is a state of optimal physical, mental and social adaptation to one's environment.
• The biomedical concept of health is the absence of disease.
• The biomedical concept of health views man as a machine and disease as a consequence of breakdown of the machine.
• The biomedical concept minimizes the role of environmental, social psychological, economic, cultural and other determinants.
• The ecological concept of health states that health is a dynamic equilibrium between man and his environment.
• The psychosocial concept of health includes biological, psychological, social, cultural, economic, and political factors.
• The holistic concept of health includes all factors of the other concepts in addition to all human activities such as education, communication, agriculture, industry, housing, recreation etc.
• Environmental indicators reflect the quality of physical and biological environment in which disease occur and people live.
• Germ Theory of Disease states that the disease is caused by microbes, showing a one to one relationship between causal agent and disease.
• Multifactorial causation is applicable to diseases like lung cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic bronchitis, etc., which cannot be explained in the basis of germ theory.
• Epidemiological triad stresses upon three factors responsible for causation of any disease: host, agent and environment.
• Socio-economic indicators include rate of population increases, per capita GNP, level of employment, dependency ratio, literacy rates, family size, housing: number of persons per room, and per capita calorie availability.
• Antenatal care or have deliveries supervised by trained personnel is a social and mental health indicator.
• The percentage of population using various methods of family planning is a social and mental health indicator.
• Air and water pollution related indicators, solid waste indicators, noise pollution related indicators, and proportion of population having access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities are environmental indicators.
• Health policy indicators give the account of the political commitment of allocation of adequate services.
• The holistic concept emphasizes promotion and protection of health.
• The World Health Organization's definition of health states that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity.
• The definition of health has been amplified and has included the ability to lead a socially and economically productive life.
• There are degrees or levels of health as there are degrees or severity of illness.
• Health and disease lie on a continuum and there is no single cut-off point.
• Health fluctuates within a range of optimum well-being to various levels of dysfunction.
• The transition from health to disease is often gradual.
• The natural history of disease has two phases: pre-pathogenesis- process in the environment and pathogenesis- process in man.
• Web of causation model was given by Macmahon and Pugh and is ideally suited for chronic diseases where the disease agent is not known, but the outcome is the interaction of multiple factors.
• Host factors (intrinsic) include demographic characteristics, biological characteristics, socio-economic characteristics, lifestyle factors, and environmental factors (extrinsic).
• Stages of illness behavior include symptom experience, assumption of the sick, and recovery.
• Disease cycle is the course of most of the communicable diseases marked by various stages: incubation period, prodromal period, fastigium, defervescence, convalescence, and defection.
• In the pre-pathogenesis phase, causative factors are referred to as epidemiological triad.
• The web of causation model considers all predisposing factors of any type and their complex interrelationship with each other.
• The natural history of disease is not same for all diseases, or in all individuals.
• Pre-pathogenesis phase refers to the period of preliminary to the onset of disease in man.
• The concept of health emphasizes that health is not static, and is a dynamic phenomenon, a process of continuous change, subject to frequent variations.
• Agent factors are defined as substance, living or non-living, or a force, tangible or intangible, the excessive presence or absence of which may initiate or perpetuate a disease process.
• Final outcome of the disease may be recovery, disability or death.
• Disease agent multiplies and induces tissue and physiological changes.