SPH200 UNIT 2 EXAM QUESTIONS WITH VERIFIED ANSWERS LATEST UPDATE 2026
Public health - Answers the science of preventing disease, promoting health, and prolonging life
through organized societal efforts, organizations, public and private communities
Four key steps of a public health initiative - Answers Assessment and monitoring, planning and
solution development, action, evaluation
What is a shared goal of the public health and health care systems? - Answers maximizing health of
population
Primary goal of public health - Answers promotion of health, prevention of disease and disability
Primary goal of health care system - Answers treatment of individuals and disease
What factor is critical for public health? - Answers knowledge translation
What area of the big 12 of public health successes must be continually improved on in Canada? -
Answers Nutrition and health -- limited/expensive access to healthy food in Northern communities
What parts of the population do universal health policies protect? - Answers disadvantaged and low-
income populations
What health intervention has saved more lives than any other in Canada within the last 50 years? -
Answers vaccination
Medicine - Answers a discipline concerned with individual patients and their outcomes
Focus of public health - Answers communities and population health outcomes in terms of large scale
metrics -- preventing illness and promoting wellbeing
Focus of medicine - Answers treating illness and disease
Why is it difficult to prove the value of public health initiatives? - Answers Proving the value of a
negative -- a successful public health initiative prevents problems, difficult to compare to another
same community with the same conditions (we can't know what might happen if the initiative had not
occurred)
Life expectancy - Answers measure of average years of life in a population, can be crude but shows
steady incline
Impact of public health initiatives in Canada - Answers estimated to account for 66% of life
expectancy gains
Quantitative disciplines in public health - Answers biostatistics and epidemiology -- work with
datasets and study sizes to find relationships between exposures and treatment
Health policy and management - Answers develops and refines health policy and management within
health policy space
Health promotion - Answers social, population-level initiatives that promote healthy behaviours in a
community or population -- how the concepts and methods of social and behavioural sciences
relevant to identification and solution of public health problems
Epidemiology - Answers looks at distributions and determinants of disease, disabilities, and death in
human populations to understand how characteristics and dynamics of human populations interface
with different outcomes (natural history of disease)
Biostatistics - Answers mathematical -- collaction, storage, retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of
health data
Environmental health - Answers biological, physical, chemical, and psychosocial factors that affect the
health of a community
How are the different disciplines related to the APAE cycle? - Answers some more related than others
at different stages
Common qualm of public health initiatives - Answers the ones "paying" are not the ones who benefit
-- those who "lose" in this case often have more power
What makes public health initiatives difficult to address? - Answers many rooted in addictive
behaviours or are difficult to talk about
Risk - Answers probability that something bad might happen
Hazard - Answers source of potential damage or harm
Exposure - Answers being exposed to or in contact with something
Miasma theory - Answers diseases caused by miasma -- "bad air" (may have actually prevented some
diseases because of masks, however no scientific testing related to this theory)
What disease is caused by the variola virus? - Answers smallpox
Variolation - Answers inoculation of smallpox into the skin (preceded vaccination, but riskier because
a more severe reaction was caused)
Public health - Answers the science of preventing disease, promoting health, and prolonging life
through organized societal efforts, organizations, public and private communities
Four key steps of a public health initiative - Answers Assessment and monitoring, planning and
solution development, action, evaluation
What is a shared goal of the public health and health care systems? - Answers maximizing health of
population
Primary goal of public health - Answers promotion of health, prevention of disease and disability
Primary goal of health care system - Answers treatment of individuals and disease
What factor is critical for public health? - Answers knowledge translation
What area of the big 12 of public health successes must be continually improved on in Canada? -
Answers Nutrition and health -- limited/expensive access to healthy food in Northern communities
What parts of the population do universal health policies protect? - Answers disadvantaged and low-
income populations
What health intervention has saved more lives than any other in Canada within the last 50 years? -
Answers vaccination
Medicine - Answers a discipline concerned with individual patients and their outcomes
Focus of public health - Answers communities and population health outcomes in terms of large scale
metrics -- preventing illness and promoting wellbeing
Focus of medicine - Answers treating illness and disease
Why is it difficult to prove the value of public health initiatives? - Answers Proving the value of a
negative -- a successful public health initiative prevents problems, difficult to compare to another
same community with the same conditions (we can't know what might happen if the initiative had not
occurred)
Life expectancy - Answers measure of average years of life in a population, can be crude but shows
steady incline
Impact of public health initiatives in Canada - Answers estimated to account for 66% of life
expectancy gains
Quantitative disciplines in public health - Answers biostatistics and epidemiology -- work with
datasets and study sizes to find relationships between exposures and treatment
Health policy and management - Answers develops and refines health policy and management within
health policy space
Health promotion - Answers social, population-level initiatives that promote healthy behaviours in a
community or population -- how the concepts and methods of social and behavioural sciences
relevant to identification and solution of public health problems
Epidemiology - Answers looks at distributions and determinants of disease, disabilities, and death in
human populations to understand how characteristics and dynamics of human populations interface
with different outcomes (natural history of disease)
Biostatistics - Answers mathematical -- collaction, storage, retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of
health data
Environmental health - Answers biological, physical, chemical, and psychosocial factors that affect the
health of a community
How are the different disciplines related to the APAE cycle? - Answers some more related than others
at different stages
Common qualm of public health initiatives - Answers the ones "paying" are not the ones who benefit
-- those who "lose" in this case often have more power
What makes public health initiatives difficult to address? - Answers many rooted in addictive
behaviours or are difficult to talk about
Risk - Answers probability that something bad might happen
Hazard - Answers source of potential damage or harm
Exposure - Answers being exposed to or in contact with something
Miasma theory - Answers diseases caused by miasma -- "bad air" (may have actually prevented some
diseases because of masks, however no scientific testing related to this theory)
What disease is caused by the variola virus? - Answers smallpox
Variolation - Answers inoculation of smallpox into the skin (preceded vaccination, but riskier because
a more severe reaction was caused)
