PUBLIC HEALTH AND BIOSTATS

• Public health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency
• Multicellular organisms require specialized exchange surfaces for efficient gas exchange due to a higher surface area to volume ratio
• Public health focuses on preventive aspects of health rather than curative aspects
• Public health deals with population-level health issues rather than individual health problems
• The 3 core functions of public health are Assessment, Policy Development, and Assurance
• The 5 steps of the public health approach in addressing health problems in a community are: defining the health problem, identifying risk factors, developing interventions, implementing interventions, and monitoring effectiveness
• Levels of prevention in public health include: Primary Prevention, Secondary Prevention, and Tertiary Prevention
• Health aspects include physical health, mental health, social health, and the successful defense of the host against forces that disturb body equilibrium
• Disease is the failure of the body's defense mechanism to cope with forces that disturb body equilibrium
• Determinants of health include stages of disease, risk factors, income, social status, education, physical environment, employment, genetics, personal behavior, health services, and gender
• The history of public health in the Philippines is based on socio-political periods
• Factors that influenced public health development include international organizations, advances in biomedical research, and a scientific approach to program management
• Future challenges in public health include urbanization, industrialization, environmental concerns, and the rise of drug-resistant microorganisms
• Statistics in public health involve descriptive and inferential statistics, branches of statistics, and the classification of statistical data
• Biostatistics involves making sense of uncertainty and using probability to predict future outcomes
• Probability is used to describe the variety and frequency of past outcomes under similar conditions as a way of predicting future events
• P value is used to express the degree of probability or improbability of a certain result in an experiment
• Confidence Interval is a range of values within which the true result probably falls
• Ways to express the degree of uncertainty include the use of statistics for problems of estimates, comparison, health need identification, analysis of problems and trends, epidemiologic evaluation, program planning, budget preparation and justification, administrative decision making, and health education
• Variables can be qualitative (categories used as labels) or quantitative (values indicating quantity or amount)
• Qualitative variables include sex, religion, place of residence, and disease status
• Quantitative variables include age, height, weight, and blood pressure
• Levels of measurements include nominal (categories used as labels only), ordinal (categories that can be ordered or ranked), interval (zero point is arbitrary), and ratio (meaningful zero point exists)
• Tabulation refers to the arrangement of data in an orderly sequence for concise presentation and easy understanding
• Graphing is used to convey a simpler idea of what the statistical table contains
• Frequency distribution groups data according to a scale of classification, showing the number of observations falling into each range of values
• Correlation data is used to compare two or more frequencies, while time series data presents variable changes over a period of time
• Parts of a table include title, stubs, column headings, body of the table, marginal totals, and footnote
• Parts of a graph include title, axis, legend, and body of the graph
• Different types of graphs include line graphs, histograms, polygons, bar or stick graphs, pictorial diagrams, and scatter point diagrams
• Rules for graphical representation of data include suitable title, measurement unit, proper scale, index, data sources, simplicity, and neatness
• Types of graphical presentation include line graphs, bar graphs, histograms, line plots, frequency tables, circle graphs, stem and leaf plots, and box and whisker plots