Week 16:
Core Domain: Population Health
❏ What are the main differences between public health and population health?
Public health is a collective effort from the various interest groups (e.g. individuals, stakeholders, health agencies etc.) which aims to create and improve the conditions that can help keep populations healthy. Public health is grounded in the sciences of population health, which is described as the study of the conditions that shape the determinants of health. Additionally, population health also studies the mechanisms in which conditions manifest as the health of individuals. Population health is an “interdisciplinary, customizable approach that allows health departments to connect practice to policy for change to happen locally”. Population health is also described as the analysis and design of interventions and management of large groups of citizens focused on improving their health status. Population health is crucial because it provides information about how a health problem came to be.
What role does policy play in addressing the needs of a defined population?
Population health policy is a form of policy that prioritizes early detection, treatment, and mitigation of, and rehabilitation following, disease among at-risk and symptomatic individuals. Furthermore, a population includes directives, plans, and courses of action that may be required by law or developed in compliance thereto, or proffered voluntarily, documented in written instruments or manifest in norms and behaviours sanctioned through customary practice without objection. Population health policy can also be described as the set of rules that were put in place for people to follow.
What are some of the objectives of population health?
To determine causes of health outcomes of a population and thus develop intervention and prevention strategies which are targeted at the causes.
Competency: Scholarship
Why is it important to choose an appropriate research design for your study?
Research Design is the overall strategy of how you will conduct your study to answer your research question. It forms the ‘blueprint’ of your study as it determines the methodology that you will use to collect, analyse and interpret data (Brink et al. 2018). The purpose of a research design is to ensure that the results obtained from a research project will effectively enable the researcher to address the research problem by answering the research question logically and unambiguously.
What distinguishes quantitative research designs from qualitative research designs?
Quantitative research designs are used to collect numerical data objectively (Bezuidenhout et al., 2014), to reduce bias and ensure academic rigour (Brink et al., 2014). Quantitative research designs are usually applied from the perspective of a positivist research paradigm where the reason for doing research is to establish causal relations that can be used to predict and control phenomena (Bezuidenhout et al., 2014).
What quantitative research designs are you familiar with?
Non-experimental Research Designs
Complementary: Research Ethics
Why is ethics in research important?
Without the principles of ethical research guiding these studies, human subjects were made up of people who were already disempowered, including slaves, prisoners, the poor, and mental-health patients. Many of these studies were very little more than torturous, often under the guise of scientific research.
What ethical constraints involving vulnerable participants can you think of?
It was only after World War II, when the world learned about Nazi war crimes and experimentation on humans, and the Nuremberg trials unearthed these atrocities, that the Nuremberg Code was established, outlining a set of rules to protect human participants.
How did research ethics develop over time?
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was conducted in 1976. From this Commission, the Belmont Report was published in 1979, outlining the principles of Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. These principles ultimately led to a new approach in bioethics known as Principlism. The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) is the World Medical Association’s (WMA) best-known policy statement. The first version was adopted in 1964 and has been amended seven times since, most recently at the General Assembly in October 2013. The current (2013) version is the only official one; all previous versions have been replaced.
Week 17:
Core Domain: Population Health
What policies do you know of that aim to improve health and health outcomes?
Policy on Quality in Health Care for South Africa, Health Legislation and Policy and the National Health Insurance policy.
What factors contribute to the biophysical environment that influences health outcomes?
The biophysical factors include climate change, deteriorating and unsafe freshwater resources, soil degradation, pollution, the loss of biodiversity and other factors. Quality of air, water, soil and other factors, which have direct impacts on the status of health and quality of life.
What factors contribute to the social environment that influences health outcomes?
The Global Context of Health and Socio-economic Development, The Socio-economic Landscape of Health in South Africa, Disparities in Health Indicators,Teenage Pregnancies, Poverty and Development, and Poverty, Mortality and Reproductive Health.
What are the disparities that exist between the rich and poor, that affect health outcomes?
There are inequities of housing, access to water, sanitation and healthcare are prevalent, as the divide between affluent and poor communities persist.
Competency: Scholarship
What qualitative research designs are you familiar with?
Phenomenology, Ethnography, Grounded Theory and Case Study.
From what you learnt last week, what types of research do you think cannot be addressed by quantitative research designs?
Qualitative research designs are used to explore the meanings, experiences, and contexts of human phenomena. They are not suitable for studies that require quantitative measurements, statistical analysis, or generalizable results. These topics require numerical data, hypothesis testing, and inferential statistics to answer the research questions. Qualitative research designs cannot provide such information.
Why do you think a researcher will choose to do a mixed-methods design instead of only a quantitative or qualitative research design?
Mixed-methods research is commonly found in the social, behavioural and health sciences, and has gained popularity. The reason for the popularity of mixed methods research lies in the nature of the research that is conducted. In life, we have multiple ways of seeing, hearing and interpreting information and thus rely on a combination of qualitative and quantitative information to create understanding.
Complementary: Research Ethics
What makes a compelling introduction in an essay?
Introduce your reader to the subject of your essay.
Give your reader an overview of what you will be doing (road map).
Assume the reader does not know the question – tell them what your essay is about.
Summarise and interpret the question, but don’t write it out.
Give a breakdown (road map) of the most important sections of your essay.
Say what position you will be defending (thesis statement).
In what ways can you substantiate the claims made in your essay?
Present and explain evidence that is used to justify my claims.
How can defining your ethical stance in an essay support your writing?
Defining your ethical stance in an essay means explaining your beliefs about right and wrong conduct and how they influence your arguments or evidence [1]. This can support your writing by showing your attitude towards the topic and establishing your credibility as a writer [2].
Week 18:
Core Domain: Population Health
When addressing the needs of different population groups, what are some of the interrelated elements that should be considered?
Improving the health of the population involves individual and collective efforts from public health stakeholders such as nurses, doctors, researchers, health agencies and government departments that collect, analyse and interpret data and then communicate that data, make recommendations which can inform policy-making and improve overall population health outcomes.
What strategies can be used to monitor and address the outbreak of disease to protect the health of populations?
Surveillance can be used to monitor and address the outbreak of disease to protect the health of populations. Surveillance methods can be either passive or active. Active surveillance refers to the process of actively seeking out health information, is the type of surveillance used in outbreaks.
What is the importance of surveillance during an outbreak?
The disease can be one that results in hospitalisation of many people, or even death, and can have serious after-effects. Active surveillance, in this case, will play a role in various ways such as limiting the spread of disease through contact tracing and by conducting health promotion campaigns. Furthermore, active surveillance can lead to early detection and treatment, which may lead to further interventions.
Competency: Scholarship
What characteristics do you think are important to explain when describing a group of people for a particular research study?
The population of interest, the sample, and sampling strategy needs to be described in the research protocol and the final research report. When describing the sampling strategy, it is necessary to specify which subtype of random or non-random sampling strategy was used. A justification for the choices made should also be provided.
Why do researchers select only some participants from an entire group of people that they wish to study?
The sample is a subset of the entire population that is selected by the researcher for a study. Sampling is the process of selecting the sample from a population in a way that will allow researchers to gain information about the phenomenon being researched to address the research problem and questions.
In what ways do you think the way you select participants can influence your findings?
There are two broad sampling strategies (also called sampling approaches or sampling techniques) that are used to obtain samples:
Random (probability) sampling where individual elements from the population are selected at random, ensuring that each individual in that population has an equal chance of being selected.
Non-random (non-probability) sampling where individuals from the population do not have equal chances of being selected.
Random sampling strategies usually result in representative samples being collected from populations, while non-random sampling often does not.
Complementary: Research Ethics
Why is informed consent important in research?
Informed consent is an essential part of healthcare practice and research. Informed consent is applied under various contexts; for instance, in South Africa, it is required for all medical treatment. In research, informed consent is a legal and ethical process which indicates that a competent participant enrolled in the study voluntarily upon being informed and receiving all the information relating to the research study in which they are enrolled.
What are the requirements for informed consent?
According to Manti and Licari (2018), informed consent in research is defined as a procedure through which a competent subject voluntarily provides his or her willingness to participate in a clinical trial upon having received and understood all the research-related information. Informed consent in a healthcare setting is described as the process whereby a healthcare provider explains a medical procedure or treatment to the patient before the patient agrees to undergo the procedure or intervention.
What are the main differences between informed consent in clinical care and research?
The main differences between informed consent in clinical care and research are:
The purpose: In clinical care, informed consent is mainly to protect the patient’s autonomy and right to choose the best option for their health. In research, informed consent is also to protect the participant’s welfare and rights, but also to ensure the scientific validity and ethical conduct of the study [1][2].
The content: In clinical care, informed consent usually includes information about the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment options, risks, benefits, alternatives and costs. In research, informed consent usually includes information about the study design, objectives, procedures, risks, benefits, confidentiality, compensation and voluntary nature of participation [1][2][3].
The process: In clinical care, informed consent is usually obtained verbally or in writing before the treatment is initiated. In research, informed consent is usually obtained in writing after the participant has received a detailed consent form and has had enough time to ask questions and consider their decision [1][2].
How do ethical and moral theories influence your own perspective?
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