Additional Resources

Further Viewing

Watch these videos to expand your knowledge and understanding of vaccine development, emerging variants, community immunity and more.

Glossary

Some of the language and concepts presented in the activities and videos may be new to you. Find key terms explained below.

Ally

Being an ally means to make a commitment to fight injustice and promote equity, and to exercise your privilege to strive for systemic improvements to society, practices and culture.

Bias

A tendency, inclination, preference, subjective opinion or prejudice toward or against something or someone. Biases are often based on stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge of an individual or circumstance.

Case reports

A doctor’s detailed summary of the symptoms, signs, diagnosis and follow-up for an individual patient.

Chinese Immigration Act (1923)

The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 restricted all Chinese immigration to Canada by narrowly defining the acceptable categories of Chinese immigrants. Between 1923 and 1946, it is estimated that only 15 Chinese immigrants gained entry into Canada.

Chronic disease/illness

A disease or illness that may last for a year or more and requires continual medical attention or limits daily activities, or both. Heart disease, diabetes and cancer are examples of chronic diseases.

Congregate living setting

A range of facilities where people (most or all of whom are not related) live or stay overnight and use shared spaces (e.g., common sleeping areas, bathrooms, kitchens). Examples include shelters, group homes, correctional facilities and children or youth residential settings.

Controlled trials

A study of people split into groups where one group does not receive the medical treatment other group(s) do, so that results can be compared between them.

Conspiracy theory

An attempt to explain a situation that rejects what is generally accepted as true within society. Conspiracy theories are often complex and offer improbable explanations. They include elements of mysterious and sinister forces, a struggle between good and evil, and a distrust of the government or popular media.

Data or data set

A collection of information that has been gathered in a systematic way that allows for comparisons within the collection and with other data sets.

Discrimination

The unequal treatment of people based on personal characteristics and membership in specific groups. Differential treatment may occur because of race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion or other categories that are considered protected grounds in human rights law.

Disinformation

Deliberately false, inaccurate or misleading information shared with others.

Epidemiologist

A scientist who looks at patterns of disease—how they are found, spread and controlled in groups of people—to understand why and how certain individuals and groups are getting sick.

Hypothesis

A researched and thoroughly-considered “best guess” that explains an observation and can be tested by scientific experiment or study.

Infodemic

Combines the words "information" and "epidemic” to refer to a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information. As facts, rumours and fears mix and disperse, it becomes difficult to learn essential information about an issue.

Misinformation

Mistakenly false, inaccurate or misleading information shared with others.

Meta analysis

When previous studies and data sets from different trials and reports are combined to look for things in common and remove biases and errors in order to form a conclusion.

Peer review

When a scientist’s work is checked by another scientist(s) in the same field, to make sure it is fair and accurate before it is shared or published.

Prejudice

Prejudice is a bias or a preconceived opinion, idea or belief about something. When you act based on prejudice, you make up your mind about something and make generalizations before fully knowing about it.

Process of science

The steps used in science to explore a question and arrive at a repeatable, testable result.

Pyramid of evidence

A visual way of representing the types of evidence used in scientific research to interpret data and arrive at conclusions. The pyramid is arranged in levels to show the quality and reliability of evidence. It begins on the bottom with information that is easier to obtain and may be biased (e.g., an expert opinion) and moves up to more time-consuming but less bias-prone investigations (e.g., an examination of multiple studies on the same subject to compare trends).

Racialized

The process of imposing identities on groups that ascribe character, behaviour and intellectual traits based on a person’s skin colour or ethnic background is racialization. And the groups who experience inequities due to these imposed identities have been “racialized.” Race is not based on biology—it is a social construct.

Search engine algorithm

A complex set of instructions that a search engine (e.g., Google or Yahoo) uses to return results that are relevant to the user. Search engine algorithms often use a user’s web activity to provide customized results, meaning that the same search by two different users may not return the same results.

Systemic racism

Refers to how racist ideas are built into the systems of how our society operates. When rules and policies favour one group over others, and when laws and legislation are good for some but not all, the result is systemic racism.

Virologist

A scientist who studies viruses, how they are transmitted and the diseases that they cause.

Virus

An extremely small simple structure containing DNA or RNA that can infect and cause disease in humans, animals or plants. Examples include: HIV that causes AIDS, SarsCoV2 that causes COVID-19 and the many types of rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.

Weighted

A data point or category being given additional value to show its greater importance or greater likelihood of taking place. When predicting outcomes, one might increase or decrease values in a calculation to account for one or more outcomes being more likely than others.

This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada.

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Additional Resources

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Glossary