| Terms used in Public Health |
| To introduce some terms used in the field of health psychology – we discuss the terms mortality, morbidity and epidemiology. |
| Mortality refers to the number of deaths due to particular causes or general causes in a particular population in a time period |
| Mortality – an example would be maternal mortality rate (MMR) – number of mothers who die in child birth (the convention is to take the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 women of reproductive age in that time period) |
| MMR in India is 212 for 2007-2009 (Sample Registration System, 2011) |
| Infant mortality rate – number of deaths before the age of 1 per 1000 live births. |
| Infant Mortality Rate for India is 50.3 for 2009 (SRS, 2011). |
| Morbidity refers to the number of cases of disease at a given point in time in a particular population |
| Morbidity – the morbidity rate refers to the prevalence of a certain disease – for example prevalence of diarrhea among children below 6 in India is 15.4% (Census of India, 2001). |
Epidemiology
The study of the frequency, distribution and causes of disease in a particular population |
