Lecture 26: The Role of Data in Public Health (Chapter 8)

After this lecture, you should be able to answer the following:

1. What is the difference between crude death rates per 100,000 people and age-adjusted death rates? Use the example of death rates in Florida and Alaska to explain.

2. What is risk assessment? What is risk perception? What do the experts perceive as the most "risky" behaviors?

3. Why is it that the general public often perceives risk in a different way than the experts? Can you give some examples of risks that the experts rank lower than the general public? Why do people rank the risk of nuclear power higher the experts? What was Chernobyl?

4. What is cost-benefit analysis?

5. What is the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)? What kinds of vital statistics does it collect? What major surveys has it conducted?

6. Are women in the United States having children at an earlier age or at a later age compared to thirty years ago? Are the number of births to unmarried women in the United States increasing or decreasing? Why are the listed causes of death on death certificates suspect to error?

7. What is the YPLL? What does it tell you?

8. Why is the Census necessary? What is the Census? What kinds of Public Health-related information are gathered by the Census?

9. The following web-site is run by the Census Bureau. If you have some free time, give it a look:
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

10. Please read the assigned homework material carefully and answer all the homework questions.