BANS 184 key facts: June 2026
- Course code: BANS 184
- Subject: Public Health and Epidemiology
- Programme: IGNOU BAG (Skill Enhancement Course), also taken in BSCG and BSCANH
- Credits: 4
- Blocks and units: 3 blocks, 10 units
- Maximum marks: 50 (term-end exam)
- Duration: 2 hours
- Questions in the June 2026 paper: 8 (attempt 5, at least 2 from each section)
- Word limits: 300 words per 10-mark answer, 150 words per 5-mark note
- Sample answers shown on this page: 2 (Q1 and Q2); all 8 in the paid file
BANS 184 Solved Question Paper for the June 2026 term-end exam gives you the official IGNOU paper of Public Health and Epidemiology with answers written to the 300-word and 150-word limits the paper sets. Two answers are open below, and all 8 questions are solved in the full file on WhatsApp 9899436384.
1. What the June 2026 Solved Paper Covers
BANS 184 Public Health and Epidemiology is a 4-credit Skill Enhancement Course in IGNOU's Bachelor of Arts (General), also taken by BSCG and BSCANH learners, and this file solves its June 2026 term-end paper.
The June 2026 paper has eight questions in two sections. Section A moves from epidemiology and descriptive studies to social determinants, the core disciplines of public health and three short notes. Section B turns to the medical fraternity in the COVID-19 pandemic, water-borne agents, globalisation and three statistics notes.
The paper asks you to attempt five questions with at least two from each section, so marks depend on writing well across both the health half and the statistics half of the course. Our file gives you a finished answer for every choice, including all six short-note options.
Students preparing more than one course can compare this paper with others in our BAG Question Paper collection, but every answer below is written only for the June 2026 BANS 184 paper.
2. Two Answers Solved in Full, Six Held Back
Questions 1 and 2 of the June 2026 BANS 184 paper are solved in full below, and the other six questions are answered only in the paid file. Both follow the 300-word guide for 10-mark questions.
Epidemiology and the types of descriptive study
Question 1: Define epidemiology. Briefly examine various types of descriptive studies. (10)
Introduction. Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to the control of health problems. This definition by John M. Last is the one the WHO uses. Distribution asks who falls ill, where and when; determinants ask why; application turns findings into prevention and control.
Epidemiological studies are grouped as observational or experimental, and observational studies are divided into descriptive and analytical studies. Descriptive studies come first. They show how a disease is spread by time, place and person, and they produce the hypotheses that analytical studies such as case-control and cohort studies later test.
Types of descriptive studies
- Case report: a detailed account of one patient with an unusual illness or reaction. In June 1981, a report of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five young men in Los Angeles became the first published signal of the AIDS epidemic.
- Case series: a group of patients with the same diagnosis, studied together to find shared features such as age, occupation or exposure. It has no comparison group, so it can suggest a cause but cannot prove one.
- Cross-sectional (prevalence) study: disease and exposure are measured at one point in time in a defined population, giving the prevalence of a condition. India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a large example, used to track anaemia, stunting and immunisation.
- Ecological (correlational) study: the unit of study is a group, such as a district or country, not an individual. Comparing average salt intake with stroke rates across countries is an example. Its main risk is the ecological fallacy, where a group-level link is wrongly applied to individuals.
Time, place and person. All descriptive studies arrange data on three axes. Time covers short-term epidemics, seasonal patterns and long-term secular trends. Place compares countries, states, or urban and rural areas. Person looks at age, sex, occupation, education and social class.
Conclusion. Descriptive studies are quick and inexpensive, and they help planners decide where services are needed most. They cannot establish cause and effect on their own, but without them analytical epidemiology would have no hypothesis to test.
Social determinants of health
Question 2: Give an account of the social determinants of health. (10)
Introduction. The WHO describes social determinants of health as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, together with the wider forces of economics, social policy and politics that shape them. The idea builds on the WHO Constitution (1948), which treats health as complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease.
In 2005 the WHO set up the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, chaired by Sir Michael Marmot. Its 2008 report, Closing the Gap in a Generation, argued that most health gaps within and between countries are avoidable because they come from the way society is organised.
Models of social determinants
Dahlgren and Whitehead's rainbow model (1991) places age, sex and heredity at the centre, surrounded by individual lifestyle, social and community networks, living and working conditions, and broad socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions. The WHO framework by Solar and Irwin (2010) separates structural determinants such as income, education, gender and social class from intermediary ones such as housing, behaviour and access to care.
Main social determinants
- Income and poverty: low income limits food, housing and treatment, and high out-of-pocket health spending in India can push a family into debt after one hospital stay.
- Education: educated mothers are more likely to use antenatal care and complete their children's immunisation, which lowers infant deaths.
- Employment and working conditions: informal workers lack sick leave and insurance, and work in mining or stone-cutting exposes people to silicosis.
- Housing, water and sanitation: crowded, poorly ventilated slums help tuberculosis spread, and unsafe water spreads diarrhoea and typhoid. The Swachh Bharat Mission (2014) targeted open defecation for this reason.
- Gender: women often eat last and seek care late, which shows in the high rate of anaemia among Indian women.
- Caste, tribe and social exclusion: Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities in remote areas often have poorer access to health facilities and worse outcomes.
Conclusion. Social determinants show that health is decided largely outside hospitals. Improving it needs joint action on education, housing, labour and sanitation, the approach the WHO calls Health in All Policies.
3. Questions Answered Only in the Full File
The six questions below are printed exactly as they appear in the June 2026 paper. Their answers are in the paid file only.
Question 3 (Section A): Briefly discuss the core disciplines of public health. (10)
Question 4 (Section A): Write short notes on any two of the following. (5 + 5)
(a) Non-communicable diseases
(b) Variants of COVID-19
(c) National Health Mission
Question 5 (Section B): Briefly examine the role played by the medical fraternity during the COVID-19 pandemic. (10)
Question 6 (Section B): Briefly discuss the effects of biological, chemical and physical agents in water on human health. (10)
Question 7 (Section B): Discuss the impact of globalization on human health. (10)
Question 8 (Section B): Write short notes on any two of the following. (5 + 5)
(a) Random sample
(b) ANOVA
(c) Arithmetic mean
These six are solved with the same care in the full file: the core disciplines of public health, short notes from non-communicable diseases to the National Health Mission, the medical fraternity during COVID-19, water-borne agents, globalisation, and three statistics notes.
4. Blocks and Units of the Course
BANS 184 is taught through 3 blocks and 10 units, moving from epidemiology and public health to social issues and then to research and statistics.
| Block | Unit | Topics this unit feeds into the paper |
|---|---|---|
| Block 1: Essentials in Epidemiology and Public Health | Unit 1: Epidemiology | Definition and scope of epidemiology; descriptive, observational and experimental study designs |
| Block 1: Essentials in Epidemiology and Public Health | Unit 2: Public Health | Meaning, origin and development of public health; its core disciplines; public health in India |
| Block 1: Essentials in Epidemiology and Public Health | Unit 3: Environmental Health | Biological, chemical and physical agents in air and water; housing and air pollution |
| Block 1: Essentials in Epidemiology and Public Health | Unit 4: Epidemiology of Diseases | Communicable and non-communicable diseases; epidemic and pandemic; malaria and COVID-19 |
| Block 2: Psychological, Behavioural and Social Issues in Public Health and Management | Unit 5: Influence of Social Factors on Health and Illness | Social determinants of health; gender and health; globalisation and health |
| Block 2: Psychological, Behavioural and Social Issues in Public Health and Management | Unit 6: Theory and Methods of Public Health | Public health infrastructure in health management; role of health professionals in a pandemic |
| Block 2: Psychological, Behavioural and Social Issues in Public Health and Management | Unit 7: Management of Health Care Programmes by Indian Government and NGOs | National health programmes and the National Health Mission; NGOs in the health sector; healthcare services |
| Block 3: Research and Statistical Methods in Public Health | Unit 8: Research Methods and Statistical Tools | Random sampling and sample design; research tools for health surveys |
| Block 3: Research and Statistical Methods in Public Health | Unit 9: Data Analysis | Arithmetic mean and measures of central tendency; data handling in SPSS |
| Block 3: Research and Statistical Methods in Public Health | Unit 10: Advanced Statistics | t-test and chi-square test; analysis of variance (ANOVA) |
Block and unit titles follow the official files listed on the eGyanKosh BANS 184 course page. The topic column is mapped from the unit titles and past IGNOU papers, so treat it as a revision guide.
If you want the units condensed into revision notes, our BANS 184 Study Material follows the same block order, so you can move from a syllabus row straight to the matching notes.
5. Question Paper Pattern and Marks Split
The BANS 184 paper carries 50 marks in 2 hours: you attempt five questions of 10 marks each, with at least two from each section.
| Section | Question numbers | Question type | Marks | Word limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section A | Q1, Q2, Q3 | Long answer | 10 each | 300 words |
| Section A | Q4 | Short notes, any two of (a) to (c) | 5 + 5 | 150 words per note |
| Section B | Q5, Q6, Q7 | Long answer | 10 each | 300 words |
| Section B | Q8 | Short notes, any two of (a) to (c) | 5 + 5 | 150 words per note |
| Total | Attempt 5 of 8 | At least 2 from each section | 50 in 2 hours | — |
This layout has stayed the same in every paper we checked since June 2023: eight questions, one short-note question closing each section, and the same word limits. Question 8 has carried at least one statistics note in every one of those sessions.
You can see the older papers side by side in our IGNOU Previous Year Question Paper section and compare how Section B shifts between health topics and statistics.
6. Topics IGNOU Keeps Repeating, June 2023 to June 2026
Environmental agents in air or water were asked in all six BANS 184 papers we checked, making them the most repeated topic in this course.
| Topic | Sessions asked | Times asked (of 6) | In June 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biological, chemical and physical agents in air or water | Jun 2023 (water), Dec 2023 (air), Jun 2024 (air), Jun 2025 (water), Dec 2025 (air), Jun 2026 (water) | 6 | Q6, water |
| Epidemiology and types of study design | Jun 2023 (observational), Jun 2024 (descriptive), Jun 2025 (observational), Dec 2025 (experimental), Jun 2026 (descriptive) | 5 | Q1 (Sample 1) |
| Communicable, infectious or non-communicable diseases | Jun 2023, Dec 2023, Jun 2024, Jun 2025, Jun 2026 | 5 | Q4(a) |
| National health programmes and the NHM | Dec 2023, Jun 2024, Dec 2025, Jun 2026 | 4 | Q4(c) |
| ANOVA (analysis of variance) | Dec 2023, Jun 2024, Dec 2025, Jun 2026 | 4 | Q8(b) |
| Healthcare services in India | Jun 2023, Dec 2023, Jun 2024, Dec 2025 | 4 | — |
| Social determinants of health | Dec 2023, Dec 2025, Jun 2026 | 3 | Q2 (Sample 2) |
| Globalisation and health | Jun 2023, Jun 2024, Jun 2026 | 3 | Q7 |
| COVID-19 and the health workforce or vaccination | Jun 2023, Dec 2025, Jun 2026 | 3 | Q4(b) and Q5 |
| Random sample or random sampling | Jun 2023, Jun 2025, Jun 2026 | 3 | Q8(a) |
| Role of NGOs in the health sector | Dec 2023, Jun 2024, Jun 2025 | 3 | — |
| t-test | Jun 2023, Jun 2024, Dec 2025 | 3 | — |
| Core disciplines of public health | Jun 2025, Jun 2026 | 2 | Q3 |
| Arithmetic mean | Jun 2025, Jun 2026 | 2 | Q8(c) |
We counted only official IGNOU papers: June 2023, December 2023, June 2024, June 2025, December 2025 and June 2026. The December 2024 paper is not published on IGNOU's question-paper pages, so it is not counted, and this table makes no five-year claim.
Topics asked three or more times are the ones to revise first, and our IGNOU Solved Guess Paper sets are built on the same session-by-session count.
7. How Our Answers Are Written and Checked
Every BANS 184 answer is written by a subject expert, kept to the IGNOU word limit and checked by a second reviewer before release.
Each answer starts from the three course blocks, then is compared with earlier papers so the wording matches how IGNOU frames public health questions.
Facts are checked before they go in: WHO definitions, commission dates, programme launch years and statistical formulas. Anything we cannot confirm from an official or published source is left out rather than guessed.
The review then covers accuracy, word count and structure. Long answers follow an introduction, a headed body and a conclusion, while short notes open with a one-line definition so the examiner sees the key term at once.
8. Solved File Index: All 8 Questions Mapped
The full BANS 184 file answers all 8 questions of the June 2026 paper: 2 are open on this page and 6 are in the paid file only.
BANS 184 is a theory course with no laboratory practical, so instead of a practical file index this table maps every question to its unit and shows where its answer sits.
| Question | Topic | Section | Marks | Unit | Where the answer is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Epidemiology and types of descriptive study | A | 10 | Unit 1 | Sample 1 above |
| Q2 | Social determinants of health | A | 10 | Unit 5 | Sample 2 above |
| Q3 | Core disciplines of public health | A | 10 | Unit 2 | Full file |
| Q4(a) | Short note: non-communicable diseases | A | 5 | Unit 4 | Full file |
| Q4(b) | Short note: variants of COVID-19 | A | 5 | Unit 4 | Full file |
| Q4(c) | Short note: National Health Mission | A | 5 | Unit 7 | Full file |
| Q5 | The medical fraternity during the COVID-19 pandemic | B | 10 | Block 2 | Full file |
| Q6 | Biological, chemical and physical agents in water | B | 10 | Unit 3 | Full file |
| Q7 | Impact of globalisation on human health | B | 10 | Block 2 | Full file |
| Q8(a) | Short note: random sample | B | 5 | Unit 8 | Full file |
| Q8(b) | Short note: ANOVA | B | 5 | Unit 10 | Full file |
| Q8(c) | Short note: arithmetic mean | B | 5 | Unit 9 | Full file |
Short-note Questions 4 and 8 are split into their options above so you can see that every option is solved, not only the two you need to attempt.
9. Programmes That Include BANS 184
BANS 184 Public Health and Epidemiology is a 4-credit Skill Enhancement Course in IGNOU's BAG programme, and BSCG and BSCANH learners sit the same paper.
In the IGNOU Bachelor of Arts (General), BANS 184 sits in the pool of 4-credit skill courses alongside options from other disciplines, and it draws directly on anthropology's interest in health, disease and population.
Bachelor of Science (General) learners can choose it from the same skill-course pool, and B.Sc. (Honours) Anthropology students take the same paper too. Because the June 2026 paper is common to all three, one solved file serves every one of them.
10. How to Get the Full Solved Question Paper
Send "BANS 184 June 2026" to WhatsApp 9899436384 and you receive the complete solved paper with all 8 questions answered.
The full file has the 2 answers shown above plus the 6 answered only in the file, including every short-note option in Questions 4 and 8, so you can pick your five questions on exam day with confidence.
Message us, confirm the course code and session, complete the payment our team shares, and the PDF arrives on the same chat. Tell us if you also need other BAG skill courses and we will let you know what is ready.
11. BANS 184 Public Health and Epidemiology FAQs
These answers cover the June 2026 BANS 184 file, the exam pattern and how to order on WhatsApp.
What is included in the Solved Question Paper June 2026?
The file contains complete answers to all 8 questions of the official IGNOU June 2026 BANS 184 paper, including every short-note option in Questions 4 and 8. Two answers, Questions 1 and 2, are shown on this page as samples. The remaining 6 questions are answered only in the full file, written to the 300-word and 150-word limits the paper sets.
How do I get the full file on WhatsApp?
Send the message "BANS 184 June 2026" to WhatsApp 9899436384. Our team replies with the price and payment details, and once payment is confirmed you receive the PDF on the same chat. It contains answers to all 8 questions of the June 2026 paper: the 2 shown on this page plus the 6 that are answered only in the full file.
How many questions must I attempt in the term-end exam?
You attempt five of the eight questions in the BANS 184 term-end exam, choosing at least two from Section A and two from Section B. Every question carries 10 marks, so the paper totals 50 marks in 2 hours. Questions 4 and 8 are short-note questions where you write any two of three notes, each worth 5 marks and about 150 words.
Which BANS 184 topics are repeated most often in IGNOU papers?
The effects of biological, chemical and physical agents on human health appeared in all six BANS 184 papers we checked, from June 2023 to June 2026, switching between air and water. Epidemiological study designs and types of disease came up five times each, while ANOVA and national health programmes appeared four times each. The December 2024 paper was not available, so it is not counted.
Are the answers based on the IGNOU study material?
Yes. Every BANS 184 answer follows the three blocks and ten units of the IGNOU Public Health and Epidemiology course material, so the terms and examples match what examiners expect. Our subject experts add checked facts such as WHO definitions and dates, and Sheetal Kirola then reviews each answer for accuracy, word limit and structure before the file is shared.
Does BANS 184 have a practical file?
No. BANS 184 is assessed through assignments and a written term-end exam, with no laboratory practical, which is why this page shows a solved file index instead of a practical file index. The statistics questions on random samples, arithmetic mean and ANOVA are written answers, and the full file explains each one with its formula and a short worked example.
Which programmes include BANS 184?
BANS 184 is a 4-credit Skill Enhancement Course in IGNOU's Bachelor of Arts (General), where learners pick it from the pool of skill courses. Students of the Bachelor of Science (General) and B.Sc. (Honours) Anthropology also take it. The June 2026 paper is the same for all of them, so this solved file works whichever of these programmes you are enrolled in.
Can the June 2026 solved paper help for December 2026?
Yes, as revision material. Each of the eight June 2026 BANS 184 questions touches a theme that IGNOU asked in at least one earlier session we checked, such as water-borne agents, study designs and globalisation. Practising these full answers prepares you for December 2026 questions from the same units, although the exact wording of the new paper will be different.
12. Who Wrote and Checked the BANS 184 Answers
The BANS 184 answers were written by Prateek Talwar and the Unnati Educations subject team, and reviewed by Sheetal Kirola.
Prateek Talwar, founder of Unnati Educations, leads the writing team for this series and prepares answers from the course blocks and the official term-end paper. Sheetal Kirola, Academic Head (M.Ed.), checks every WHO definition, commission date, programme launch year and statistical formula before release.