HSCI 130 – Midterm 1 Prep
Created by Lumine M.
***Bonus Question: Open-ended; Talk about something related to text/class that you learned
● needs to be explained in depth to show your understanding
● Can’t be general, use details about whatever concept(s) you’re talking about
***10th Written Question: You need to be able to talk about something from class that isn’t
covered in depth in your version of the exam (at least this was in my version, unsure about
others.)
● A concept that you can provide lots of details to show your understanding
Health Surveys
● National Population Health Survey (measure health of Canadians and monitor
changes in health status / health behaviours over time)
● Canadian Community Health Survey (gather health-related data at the sub-provincial
levels of geography (info like health status, rick factors, and health-care use)
● Canadian Health Measures Survey (collect important health information through a
household interview and direct physical measures
○ (get rid of biases in responses, more accuracy)
Multiple Choice / True or False
● % spent on public health = 5%
● Ways to Categorize Disease:
○ Infectious (Communicable) → caused by pathogenic microorganisms, (in)directly
transferred from person to person
■ e.g., Vector-borne = living animals/insects spread disease (e.g., ticks)
■ e.g., Air-borne = spread through the air
■ e.g., Vehicle-borne = contaminated, non-moving objects
○ Chronic (Non-Communicable) → not passed from person to person, long
duration & slow progression, increase with aging population
■ 4 subtypes of Chronic Disease
1. cancer
2. cardiovascular
3. chronic respiratory infections
4. diabetes
○ Accident/Injury →from stuff like traffic collisions, drowning, poisoning, falls or
burns - and violence - from assault, self-inflicted violence or acts of war.
● Self-Reported Health:
○ declines with age + not much difference between men/women
○ contextual factors (e.g., social, economical, political, cultural)
■ unsure of link between contextual factors & self-rated health →
questionable validity
○ excellent vs. poor health → older adults → indicator of mortality (# of deaths in
a population within a time period)
○ difficult to determine whether responses actually reflect people’s health
● Salutogenic Model:
○ what factors contribute/enhance good health
○ origins of good health
○ health-protective behaviours
○ healthy population
● Wellness:
○ healthiness, coherence QoL, fitness
○ physical, psychological, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual
○ Coherence:
■ Comprehensibility: life makes sense; ordered, consistent, predictable
■ Manageability: things will work out; resources to deal with obstacles,
confidence in coping
■ Meaningfulness: life makes sense emotionally + it’s worth committing to
areas of life
● Paradigms:
○ structuralist functionalist
■ harmonious social system, social roles + institutions (e.g., doctors/med.
clinics)
■ medico-centric (POV of medicine), sick role
○ symbolic interactionist
■ interactions of individuals, socially construct health/illness
○ conflict theory
■ competing interest groups, med. profession = authority
■ medical dominance → profession = power over health care system
■ medical ideology → dominant belief → physicians = authority →
health/illness = market value
■ profession of medicine = ult. authority that determines what disease is
■ **think IDSA/CDC + insurance companies from Under Our Skin Film
○ feminist paradigm
■ female POV on historical oppression of women in patriarchy (society
with men > women with the use of power)
■ subjective health experiences between men/women
■ androcentric: focus/centered on men -> (MC)
■ intersectionality: gender, social class, ethnicity, age
○ sociology of body
■ bodies = socially constructed (not only bio)
■ embodiment: human perceptions/experiences through our bodies
■ medical gaze: human body = object of study (focus on symptoms);
biopower: power = knowledge over people’s bodies
● Top 3 leading causes of death in NA in 1990s = (1) pneumonia (2) tuberculosis (3)
diarrhea
○ You should also know what the leading causes of death are in present day (i
didn’t know the answer during the midterm oops so i guessed)
Short Answer (10, 35 marks)
● How do we conceptualize health? ; know at least 4 of these
○ normality (what is considered “normal health” in the population)
○ balance (balancing all aspects of life)
○ adaptability (able to deal with reasonable life challenges)
○ fitness (physical exercise)
○ absence of illness/disease
○ physical/emotional/social
○ resource for life (necessary to maintain throughout life course)
○ function (work, daily life)
● Why does health, illness and disease change over time? ; you should know 3 - 4 of
these
○ advancements in medicine (e.g., vaccine for COVID-19)
○ resistance/evolution (e.g., an organism carries the disease)
○ cultural ideas (e.g., Greek Humoural Theory, Indigenous Medicine Wheel)
○ new technology that cause disease (e.g., vapes)
○ environmental changes (e.g., pollution → global warming)
○ new pathogens emerge (e.g., COVID-19)
○ social change/ways of thinking (e.g., homosexuality as a mental disease)
● Sick role (2 marks) ; you either get ROLES or DUTIES in the written questions
○ (Parsons’) Sick Role: behavioural expectations on how a sick person should
act that’s embedded in society
■ Rights:
■ exempt from blame for being ill
■ temporarily exempt from regular roles/responsibilities
■ Duties:
■ try to get better to resume responsibilities
■ seek competent help/treatment and cooperate on getting well
○ Criticisms of Parsons’ Sick Role: you need to know these
■ focus on acute illness (rather than chronic illness)
■ focus on physical factors (rather than psychosocial factors)
■ medico-centric bias (perspective of medicine) (rather than people’s
ordinary self-care practices like eating healthy, daily exercise)
■ doesn’t consider social factors like gender, social class, age
● Pellagra Epidemic ; you need to know what leads to the epidemic
○ US → resistance to evidence → stuck in paradigms (way of thinking)
○ although there was existing evidence for the true cause of pellagra by Dr.
Joseph Goldberger, the U.S. healthcare system was heavily convinced that
the cause was germs
■ Goldberger: pellagra isn’t infectious, but diet-related; mass production of
corn, mass consumption of corn in poverty because it was cheap →
spoiled corn affecting diets
■ discovers lack of vitamin B3 (niacin) is what causes pellagra
● Smallpox Eradication or Polio Challenges ; you get either SMALLPOX or POLIO
SMALLPOX
○ herd immunity: use of RING VACCINATION (immunize people in rings to
minimize spread) ***you MUST mention both herd immunity and ring
vaccination
○ challenges:
■ find every case ; you should know the methods below
■ house-to-house visits/smallpox warriors (hippies)
■ runners/teach kids/commonly identify
■ religious shrines/missionaries
■ train/train stations
● POLIO
○ EVERYONE MUST be vaccinated
○ train people involved (some workers weren’t properly trained)
○ religious/cultural resistance (e.g., believing God will cure disease instead)
○ vaccines deteriorate in heat (must be kept cool with ice)
● Biomedical Model Central Ideas (4 marks) ; you should know at least 4 out of 5 of these
○ Mind-Body Dualism = mind and body are separate, physical and psychological
factors are separate; focus on biophysical factors
○ Machine Metaphor = body is a machine (Western Science); body is made up of
biophysical processes (e.g., genes)
○ Physical Reuctionism = understanding phenomena by breaking down parts of
a whole; examine parts individually to gain understanding
○ Specific Etiology = every disease has a cause; discovering causes allows us to
intervene/provide treatment
■ with control (e.g., drug therapy)
■ by removal (e.g., surgery)
○ Regimen/Control = fight/minimize disease through regimen and control
■ Assumption: we can discipline our bodies (e.g., eating, exercising,
managing stress)
■ Individuals are responsible for care and maintenance of our
bodies/machines
● Public Health + Health Promotion ; you need to know these, but for me it showed up in
MC (this part was the one i was least prepared for… so i dont have much)
Responsibilities
○ health emergencies
○ chronic disease / injury prevention
○ health promotion
● Upstream and Downstream vs. Levels of Prevention
○ Prevention
■ Primordial = education about [whatever you example is]
■ Primary = vaccination
■ Secondary = screening
■ tertiary = treating present disease
Upstream Downstream
Policy/Programs: Disease/Injury: infectious disease, chronic
corporations/businesses, disease, injury
government agencies, schools
Social Inequities: class, Mortality: infant mortality life expectancy
race/ethnicity, gender, immigration
status, sexual orientation
focuses on the cause of health focuses on dealing with present health
problems before they occur, to problems instead of finding the root cause of
prevent them from happening the problem; trying to save the
again already-affected, rather than preventing the
susceptible/normal
● What is the significance of paradigms?
○ influence direction of science → what methods are being used?
○ influence health care system → e.g., what counts as disease and who decides?
○ certain paradigms can have negative factors that affect the population (think of
conflict paradigm in Under Our Skin Film, or Pellagra in the US)
● List 1 of the strategies and how they work for Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion that
can be applied to improve health ; you need to know 4 of these and explain 1 in detail +
example
○ HEALTHY PUBLIC Policy: beyond health care; easiest choice = healthiest
choice; all policy makers → some policies make it harder to commit unhealthy
behaviours
■ (e.g., taxing drugs, smoke-free zones, less tax on low alcohol beer,
seatbelts)
○ Creative Supportive Environments: taking care of each other, our communities
and natural environment; environments → healthy choices
■ (e.g., worksafe initiatives, shaded areas for kids at school, recycling
programs, quitline for smokers)
○ Strengthen Community Action: empowerment of communities; dynamic
group of people in common space, identities, interests, concerns; health
outcomes determined BY the people
■ (e.g., community health centres, community/recreation centres)
○ Develop Personal Skills: individuals need support to change health; increase
available options for more control over health; increase life skills; enable
COPING
■ (e.g., cooking classes = healthy cooking techniques, sports lessons,
art/music lessons, extracurriculars/clubs in school)
○ Reorient Health System: shift some of the emphasis in “health care” → health
promotion; increase attention to health research + changes in professional
education and training (go UPSTREAM); curative services → preventative
health promotion; avoids biomedical model
■ (e.g., doctors incorporating dietary advice during consultations;
prescribing exercise programs for treatment of high blood pressure;
funding health promotion initiatives out of budgets of hospitals)
● Western vs. Indigenous ways of knowing ; one of the written questions I got!
● ***this question is worth 4 marks, i wasn’t sure to what extent details count as points so i
just compared 4 sets of things (4 aspects each) you can write more if you can but also
be careful of the time!
○ Asumptions of Western Science (this is from slides)
■ Shared biophysical social world
■ Humans investigate our world
■ Independent investigation
■ Individuals and groups of scientists can compare ideas, methods and
results and should come to similar conclusions
○ Other stuff you could say about Western Science
■ Science is a body of knowledge (OEEP = observation, experimentation,
explanation, prediction)
■ Use of paradigms to look at health/illness/disease
○ Indigenous ways of knowing
■ Medicine Wheel:
■ Symbol of life / health / values
■ Mental / physical / spiritual / emotional
■ Indigenous Disease Theory:
■ disease/health viewed as product of NATURAL and
SUPERNATURAL occurrences
■ Disease = result of disruption of balance and harmony among
and between humans
■ Goals of healing systems = restoration of balance
■ Traditional Healers & Medicinal Practices:
■ Knowledge of medicinal plants
■ Healers: herbalists, “medicine men”, shamans
○ Other things you could say about Indigenous Ways of Knowing
■ Knowledge of health is passed down from Elders and traditional healers
○ Comparing Traditional vs. Scientific (images below)
■ You could probably mention any of these comparisons