CHES Health Equity and Disparities 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When designing a health intervention for a low-literacy population, a health educator should FIRST:
- Use medical terminology for accuracy
- Assess the community's preferred communication formats (Correct answer)
- Translate all materials into Spanish
- Simplify content to a 6th-grade reading level
Correct answer: Assess the community's preferred communication formats
Community assessment of preferred formats ensures materials are culturally appropriate and meet actual communication needs before design begins.
Question 2: Which statistic is used to summarize overall health disparity across multiple population groups simultaneously?
- Gini coefficient
- Summary disparity index (Correct answer)
- Pearson correlation
- Relative risk
Correct answer: Summary disparity index
The summary disparity index aggregates inequalities across multiple groups into a single measure for tracking overall disparities over time.
Question 3: A rural community lacks a grocery store within 10 miles. This is best described as:
- Food insecurity
- Food desert (Correct answer)
- Nutritional disparity
- Agricultural inequity
Correct answer: Food desert
A food desert is defined as a low-income area with limited access to affordable, nutritious food due to lack of nearby stores.
Question 4: Which of the following is an example of a downstream intervention to address health disparities?
- Advocating for living wage policies
- Providing free blood pressure medications to uninsured patients (Correct answer)
- Zoning for more green spaces in low-income neighborhoods
- Expanding Medicaid eligibility
Correct answer: Providing free blood pressure medications to uninsured patients
Downstream interventions target immediate health problems at the individual level rather than addressing upstream social or structural causes.
Question 5: The Indian Health Service was established primarily to fulfill which obligation?
- Federal treaty responsibilities to American Indian/Alaska Native tribes (Correct answer)
- Reducing health care costs for rural populations
- Providing care to veterans
- Expanding Medicaid in tribal areas
Correct answer: Federal treaty responsibilities to American Indian/Alaska Native tribes
IHS was created to fulfill the federal government's obligation to provide health services to American Indian and Alaska Native people based on treaty rights.
Question 6: Which concept explains how living in a disadvantaged neighborhood independently affects health beyond individual-level risk factors?
- Place-based effects (Correct answer)
- Selection bias
- Individual determinism
- Health locus of control
Correct answer: Place-based effects
Place-based effects recognize that neighborhood environments exert independent influences on health separate from the characteristics of individuals living there.
Question 7: A health educator uses 'teach-back' method with limited-English-proficiency patients. The PRIMARY purpose is to:
- Assess interpreter accuracy
- Confirm patient understanding of health information (Correct answer)
- Document patient compliance
- Reduce appointment time
Correct answer: Confirm patient understanding of health information
The teach-back method verifies patient comprehension by asking them to explain information in their own words.
CHES Health Equity and Disparities 3
When designing a health intervention for a low-literacy population, a health educator should FIRST: