Explain The Patterns And Trends Of Health And Illness In Three Social Groups

In this assignment I am going to write a report explaining the patterns and trends of health and illness in three social groups: gender, ethnicity and social class. I am also going to explain the pattern and trends of health and illness which looks at measurement of health, morbidity rates, mortality rates, disease incidence, disease prevalence and health surveillance.
Measurements of health
Health is generally measured in negative terms, such as the level of disease and the number of deaths within a population, rather than by analysis of positive indicators, such as the presence of health. Epidemiology is the study of disease origins or cause and how much information about the number of people within a population. Epidemiological data provides valuable information about the number of people a population that are affected by ill health, who die as a result of particular health problems and which groups of
Mortality rates can be compared internationally because most countries hold similar information. Mortality rate are expressed in several different ways. A basis measurement is to express mortality as a number of deaths per 100 per year. However this does not allow the diversity of age within the population which varies over time and between geographical areas. For example, mortality rates in the south-east of England will appear high as there are a high percentage of older people living there. The standardised mortality ration (SMR) is the method used to compare mortality levels across different years or for different sub-populations within the same year. The SMR is useful because it can be used to identify and for