Introduction
This note defines group health and public health and describes the three main groups of indices by which public health is determined: demographic indices, disease incidence, and physical development and activity (including acceleration).
Definitions
- WHO definition (1946): health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- Public health: the health of a population and of a society as a whole.
- Group health: the health of social and ethnic groups within a population, defined by specific criteria (sex, age, occupation, residence).
- It can define a type of population affected by risk factors, so specific diseases can be expected because of the environment.
- Examples: children at age 7 (influenced by specific health factors), pregnant women, teachers, doctors, agricultural workers.
Social medicine deals with individual, group and public health.
Indicators: determinants of public health
Public health is determined by 3 main groups of indices.
1. Demographic indices ('population information')
- Examples: mortality rate, natural growth, total population.
- Demography is the study of the characteristics of human populations, such as size, growth, density, distribution and vital statistics.
- Medical demography studies the demographic processes closely related to the health of the population.
- Demography has 2 main branches:
- Population statics: studies the size, distribution and structure of the population by age, sex and other factors. The main instrument is the census: the total process of collecting, compiling and publishing demographic, economic and social data, at a specified time, for all persons in a country or delimited territory. Demography in Bulgaria is monitored by the National Statistical Institute.
- Population dynamics: the study of changes in the population and of the processes influencing those changes. It includes natural and vital events (births, deaths, marriages, divorces etc.) and migration (external, internal, forced).
2. Disease incidence ('population health')
- Socially important diseases appear in young individuals: increased incidence of TB, mental disorders and STDs.
- Increased incidence of temporary incapacity for work because of cardiovascular, endocrine, oncological and skeletal diseases.
3. Physical development and activity
- The quality and functioning of each individual: a combination of morphological, functional and mental indices showing the level and dynamics of growth of an organism and its ability to adapt to a changing environment.
- It includes acceleration: quicker development of the human organism, also called social infantilism.
- Features: higher indices at birth, earlier teething, earlier finish of growth.