CMH 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Perinatal Mortality, Health Indicator, Traumatic Brain Injury
Health Indicators – Lecture 4
• Health indicator – a variable that gives a measurement of a specific aspect of health within a
population for a specific period of time (usually 1 year)
• Morbidity
o Another way to talk about illness
o Morbidities can range from Alzheimer’s to diabetes to traumatic brain injury
o Morbidities are not deaths
o Prevalence: a measure often used to determine the level of morbidity in the
population
• Disability
o The consequence of an impairment (physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional,
developmental, or a combination)
o May be present from birth or occur
o Covers impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions
o Complex phenomenon reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body
and features of the society in which they live
▪ Affected by environmental and social barriers
• Mortality
o Another term for death
o Mortality rate is the number of deaths (due to a disease) divided by the total
population
Counting Disease
• The most basic measures of disease occurrence are prevalence and incidence
o Prevalence: the proportion of a population affected by a disease at a given point in
time
o Incidence: the number of new cases of a disease in a population during a specified
time period
▪ Incidence x duration = prevalence
• Some diseases have a very high incidence but a very low prevalence
o Diarrhea is an example of this, because most children recover quickly
• Increasing efficacy of ARVs (anti-retro viral drugs) transformed HIV/AIDS to a disease with
high prevalence (long duration) but very low incidence.
o Fewer people infected with HIV died of AIDS
Definitions of Childhood Mortality
• DALYs: Disability Adjusted Life Years
• Infant Mortality rate: number of deaths of infants under the age of 1 per 1000 live births in a
given year
o Neonatal mortality rate: number of deaths of infants who die in the first few months
of life
o Postneonatal: between first few months and 1 year
• Perinatal: deaths of the fetus, before birth
o Perinatal mortality rate is the total number of deaths of the fetus from gestational age
of 22 weeks to the 7th day of life
• Child mortality rate: the probability that a newborn will die before reaching age five,
expressed as a number per 1000 live births
o Lower rates are better
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