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Topic Vocabulary

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Health & Wellbeing

Vocabulary for essays on public health, mental health, healthcare systems, diet, and exercise.

15 essential words example levels per word58+ collocations

15 / 15 words

01

obesity

noun

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Definition

A medical condition characterised by excess body fat, typically defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, associated with increased risk of numerous health complications.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Obesity is when a person is very overweight, which can cause health problems.

Intermediate

Rising rates of childhood obesity have prompted governments to introduce restrictions on junk food advertising.

Band 9

Obesity — now classified by the World Health Organisation as a global epidemic — is the product not of individual moral failing but of obesogenic environments engineered by food corporations whose financial incentives are fundamentally misaligned with population health.

Common collocations

childhood obesityobesity epidemictackle obesityobesity rateslink to obesity
02

preventable disease

noun phrase

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Definition

Illness and health conditions that can be avoided through lifestyle choices, vaccination, screening, or public health interventions.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Eating healthy food can prevent many diseases — these are called preventable diseases.

Intermediate

Preventable diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease cost national health systems hundreds of billions each year.

Band 9

The enormous burden that preventable disease places on healthcare systems is fundamentally a consequence of policy failures — inadequate nutrition regulation, insufficient health education, and the systematic under-funding of primary and preventive care.

Common collocations

tackle preventable diseasereduce preventable diseasepreventable disease burden
03

mental health

noun phrase

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Definition

A person's condition with regard to their psychological and emotional wellbeing; the state of functioning well and managing life's challenges without significant psychological distress.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Mental health means how we feel emotionally and psychologically.

Intermediate

There is growing recognition that mental health services are chronically underfunded relative to physical health services in most countries.

Band 9

The persistent stigmatisation of mental health conditions — and the consequent reluctance of sufferers to seek treatment — constitutes a major barrier to care that public health campaigns alone cannot resolve without structural changes to how societies conceptualise psychological distress.

Common collocations

mental health crisismental health servicesimprove mental healthmental health stigmamental health support
04

sedentary lifestyle

noun phrase

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Definition

A way of living that involves little physical activity, characterised by prolonged sitting, particularly associated with office work and screen-based leisure.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

A sedentary lifestyle means not getting enough exercise because you sit down all day.

Intermediate

The shift towards desk-based work and screen entertainment has produced increasingly sedentary lifestyles, contributing to the rise in cardiovascular disease.

Band 9

Urbanisation, technological convenience, and the structural design of sedentary workplaces have conspired to produce sedentary lifestyles at a population scale that existing health infrastructure — designed for infectious rather than lifestyle disease — is structurally unprepared to address.

Common collocations

combat sedentary lifestylesedentary behaviourincreasingly sedentary
05

epidemic

noun

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Definition

A widespread occurrence of a disease or condition in a community at a particular time; sometimes used metaphorically for widespread social problems.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

An epidemic is when many people in a place get the same illness.

Intermediate

The opioid epidemic in the United States claimed more than 80,000 lives in a single year.

Band 9

The contemporary epidemic of loneliness, while lacking the visible markers of infectious disease, represents a public health challenge of comparable magnitude — associated with elevated mortality risk equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes per day.

Common collocations

global epidemicobesity epidemictackle the epidemicepidemic of
06

healthcare system

noun phrase

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Definition

The organised provision of medical services, facilities, and policies within a country or region, including hospitals, primary care, and public health programmes.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

The healthcare system includes hospitals and doctors who help people when they are ill.

Intermediate

Ageing populations are placing enormous financial pressure on public healthcare systems across Europe.

Band 9

The sustainability of universal healthcare systems in the face of demographic ageing, rising treatment costs, and an expanding burden of chronic disease demands not merely efficiency reforms but a fundamental reorientation towards prevention and community-based care.

Common collocations

universal healthcare systemstrain on the healthcare systemreform the healthcare system
07

wellbeing

noun

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Definition

The state of being comfortable, healthy, and happy; a holistic condition encompassing physical, mental, social, and financial dimensions of a person's life.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Wellbeing means feeling happy, healthy, and comfortable in your life.

Intermediate

Governments are increasingly measuring citizens' subjective wellbeing alongside traditional economic indicators such as GDP.

Band 9

The recognition that aggregate economic growth fails to capture the distribution of wellbeing across a population has prompted a paradigm shift towards composite wellbeing indices — measuring life satisfaction, social trust, and environmental quality alongside conventional productivity metrics.

Common collocations

promote wellbeingemotional wellbeingworker wellbeingwellbeing indicators
08

vaccination

noun

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Definition

The administration of a vaccine to stimulate an immune response and protect against infectious disease.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Vaccination helps protect people from getting serious diseases.

Intermediate

Mass vaccination campaigns have been responsible for the eradication of smallpox and the near-elimination of polio globally.

Band 9

The resurgence of measles in countries with historically high vaccination coverage illustrates how the collective immunity upon which disease eradication depends can be rapidly eroded by misinformation campaigns that exploit parental anxiety.

Common collocations

vaccination programmechildhood vaccinationmandatory vaccinationvaccination rates
09

nutrition

noun

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Definition

The process of taking in and utilising food for growth, energy, and health maintenance; also the study of food's relationship to health.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Good nutrition means eating healthy food that gives your body what it needs.

Intermediate

Poor nutrition in early childhood has lifelong consequences for cognitive development and immune function.

Band 9

The global paradox of simultaneous food insecurity and overconsumption of ultra-processed foods underscores how nutrition outcomes are determined not by food availability alone but by the political economy of the food system — including agricultural subsidies, trade policy, and corporate marketing power.

Common collocations

improve nutritionnutrition educationpoor nutritionnutritional value
10

life expectancy

noun phrase

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Definition

The average number of years a person is expected to live, typically calculated from birth based on current mortality rates.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Life expectancy tells us on average how long people live.

Intermediate

Advances in medicine and sanitation have dramatically increased average life expectancy over the twentieth century.

Band 9

The divergence in life expectancy between the wealthiest and most deprived postcodes within the same city is perhaps the most damning indictment of the extent to which health outcomes remain determined by socioeconomic circumstance rather than access to medical technology.

Common collocations

average life expectancyincrease life expectancylife expectancy gap
11

chronic illness

noun phrase

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Definition

A long-lasting health condition that can be controlled but not cured.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

A chronic illness is a sickness that lasts a long time, like diabetes.

Intermediate

Chronic illnesses now account for the majority of healthcare spending in most developed economies.

Band 9

The epidemiological transition toward chronic illness as the dominant burden of disease has exposed structural limitations in healthcare systems originally designed around acute, episodic care.

Common collocations

manage chronic illnesschronic illness preventionburden of chronic illnessliving with chronic illness
12

public health

noun phrase

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Definition

The science and practice of protecting and improving the health of communities through education, policy, and disease prevention.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Public health works to keep everyone in a community healthy.

Intermediate

Public health campaigns have been instrumental in reducing smoking rates over the past four decades.

Band 9

Robust public health infrastructure functions as a form of societal insurance whose value, while undervalued in periods of stability, becomes existentially evident in the face of pandemic threats.

Common collocations

public health policypublic health crisispublic health campaigninvest in public health
13

burnout

noun

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Definition

Physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Burnout is when you feel very tired and stressed from working too much.

Intermediate

Burnout has become particularly prevalent among healthcare workers since the start of the pandemic.

Band 9

Workplace burnout is not merely an individual pathology but a symptom of organisational and economic structures that systematically extract more from workers than can sustainably be replenished.

Common collocations

suffer burnoutworkplace burnoutprevent burnoutburnout syndrome
14

stigma

noun

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Definition

A mark of social disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

There is still a stigma around talking about mental health problems.

Intermediate

Reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness is essential to encouraging people to seek treatment.

Band 9

The persistence of stigma around mental illness constitutes a public health obstacle of the first order, deterring help-seeking behaviour and entrenching the very isolation that exacerbates psychological distress.

Common collocations

reduce stigmasocial stigmastigma surroundingchallenge the stigma
15

preventative care

noun phrase

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Definition

Healthcare aimed at preventing illness rather than treating it after it occurs.

Examples across all levels

Foundation

Preventative care includes things like vaccines and regular check-ups.

Intermediate

Investment in preventative care produces significant long-term savings for healthcare systems.

Band 9

A strategic reorientation toward preventative care, while politically less visible than emergency interventions, yields demonstrably superior outcomes both for individual health trajectories and for systemic fiscal sustainability.

Common collocations

invest in preventative carepreventative care programmesaccess to preventative carepreventative healthcare

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