module 6

• Factors that can predispose a population to increased or decreased utilization of health care services

  • Socio-economic status
  • Physician supply
  • Policies and beliefs of a nation
  • Risk behaviors of a population
  • Health status
• External environment factors that affect healthcare organizations' performance and quality of services

  • Patient socio-demographic variables
  • Patient cooperation
  • Patient illness (severity of illness)
  • Physician socio-demographic variables
  • Physician competence (Knowledge and skills)
  • Physician motivation and satisfaction
  • Healthcare system
  • Resources and facilities
• Barriers to health services

  • High cost of care
  • Inadequate or no insurance coverage
  • Lack of availability of services
  • Lack of culturally competent care
• Determining solutions to factors affecting the health care system

  1. Identifying how various external social factors affect the issue

  2. Developing and implementing an action plan based on understanding how to approach them successfully to change the way the issue plays out in the community and resolve the problem
• Approach to addressing external social environment determinants

  • Through environmental and policy conditions, rather than attempting to change external environmental social factors all at once
• Levels of preventive care

  • Primary prevention
  • Secondary prevention
  • Tertiary prevention
• Primary prevention


  Aims to avoid the development of a disease or disability in healthy individuals
• Primary prevention


  • Encouraging less consumption of sugars to reduce caries risk
  • Vaccinations for infectious diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, and polio
• Secondary prevention


  Focus is on early disease detection, making it possible to prevent the worsening of the disease and the emergence of symptoms, or to minimize complications and limit disabilities before the disease becomes severe
• Secondary prevention


  • Screening for breast and cervical cancer
  • Detecting disease in asymptomatic patients with screening or diagnostic testing
  • Preventing the spread of communicable diseases
• Tertiary prevention


  Aims to reduce the negative impact of an already-established disease by restoring function and reducing disease-related complications, and to improve the quality of life for people with disease