Disease Dilemmas is the OCR A-Level Geography (H481) unit on the global patterns of disease, why they differ between and within countries, and how far disease can be predicted, treated and eradicated. It is one of five Geographical Debates on Paper 3; students study two, and each one is examined in all three sections of that paper. The specification requires seven case studies: a country affected by a natural hazard, a country experiencing air pollution, one communicable disease, one noncommunicable disease, the role of one NGO, one medicinal plant, and one pharmaceutical transnational.
The whole of Disease Dilemmas for OCR A-Level Geography (H481), built around the five enquiry questions.
What are the global patterns of disease and can factors be identified that determine these?
Is there a link between disease and levels of economic development?
How effectively are communicable and noncommunicable diseases dealt with?
How far can diseases be predicted and mitigated against?
Can diseases ever be fully eradicated?
Every specification bullet point is covered, clearly identified, and in one download. No more searching across your paper files, teacher PowerPoints, OneNote and Google Classroom assignments, or generic free notes you have found online.
Every process in the specification is covered in the way the exam asks for it: what causes it, who it affects, and why the pattern differs from one country to the next. That is what the extended questions in Sections B and C need.
Examiner's Warnings — concise summaries of the common mistakes identified in the OCR Examiner's Reports, so that you do not make the same ones and do not need to go and read them yourself.
Past exam paper questions, and where to find them — every question OCR has already set on each topic, so that you know how this material is tested in the exam.
Potential Future Questions — written with the same command words and the same wording structure as the OCR questions, so that you can see what is likely to come up and prepare for it.
Revision Recall — retrieval practice questions, so that you revise actively rather than re-reading.
Disease Dilemmas asks for seven case studies, and each one is a different kind of thing: a country, a disease, an NGO, a plant, a drug company. That is what makes this unit awkward to revise from scattered notes.
They are covered here, each one labelled, so that you revise the ones your school teaches: malaria in Ethiopia, cancer in the UK, cholera in Haiti, swine flu, and air pollution in India.
What if my school teaches a different case study? Email jono@geographystudio.co.uk and say which one. I will reply, and it tells me which case study to write next.
Most students learn case studies as a set of facts, then find that the exam does not ask for facts. It asks for an argument. Every case study closes with a Big Picture: the story that case study tells, and the different arguments it can be used to build.
Paper 3 is the Geographical Debates paper. There are five topics; you study two, and you answer on both.
Your two topics each come up three times. Section A is based on the Resource Booklet. Section B is synoptic, so it asks you to bring in the rest of the course. Section C is an extended essay. One unit, examined three ways — which is why knowing a debate properly is worth more here than anywhere else on the course.
If you have not tested these notes yet, the complete Earth's Life Support Systems unit is free.