Risk factors and causal mechanisms in disease

Overview

The human and financial costs of non-communicable disease, national differences in disease, what risk factors are and why correlation is not causation, the effects of exercise, smoking, obesity and alcohol, carcinogens, and measured against perceived risk for imposed, unfamiliar and invisible hazards.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Describe one financial cost of non-communicable disease to a country.

   Model answer

   Treating and caring for patients takes a large share of the health budget, and people too ill to work reduce the country's output.

2. 2

   Describe one human cost of non-communicable disease to a family.

   Model answer

   Long illness and early death cause distress, and relatives may have to give up work or study to provide care.

3. 3

   Suggest why rates of non-communicable disease differ between one country and another.

   Model answer

   Diet, alcohol use, smoking rates and access to healthcare differ, so the lifestyle risk factors people are exposed to are not the same.

4. 4

   What is a risk factor?

   Model answer

   Something that is linked to an increased rate of a disease.

5. 5

   Does a risk factor always cause the disease it is linked to? Explain your answer.

   Model answer

   No — the link may only be a correlation, and a causal mechanism has to be shown separately.

6. 6

   A study finds that people who drink more coffee suffer more heart attacks. Explain why this does not prove that coffee causes heart attacks.

   Model answer

   The two are only correlated; another factor, such as smoking being commoner among heavy coffee drinkers, could be the real cause.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.