OCR A-Level Geography Geographical debates (03), June 2025: Question 14

📐 Mark Breakdown

• AO1: 9 marks total
  Level 4 (7–9 marks): Comprehensive, accurate knowledge.
  Level 3 (5–6 marks): Thorough knowledge.
  Level 2 (3–4 marks): Reasonable knowledge.
  Level 1 (1–2 marks): Basic/isolated facts.
• AO2: 24 marks total
  Level 4 (19–24 marks): Convincing, balanced analysis with sustained, substantiated evaluative judgements.
  Level 3 (13–18 marks): Sound evaluation, but judgements lack consistent authority.
  Level 2 (7–12 marks): Descriptive; generalised judgements.
  Level 1 (1–6 marks): Superficial; un-evidenced assertions.

🧠 Top-Level (29–33 Mark) Differentiators

• Relativity: Never discuss economics in isolation. You must weigh economic drivers against environmental, political, and socio-cultural factors.
• Multi-scalar thinking: Show how factors act differently at global scales (air travel, trade) versus local scales (overcrowded housing, lack of piped sanitation).
• Nuance & Exceptions: High economic wealth does not eliminate disease—it shifts disease profiles towards non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and creates new vulnerabilities (e.g., global connectivity diffusing pandemics like COVID-19).

💡 1. Introduction & Economic Primacy

Focus: Define disease types and establish Omran's Epidemiological Transition Model (ETM).

• Define communicable (infectious) vs non-communicable (lifestyle/degenerative) diseases.
• Role of Wealth: Economic development funds clean water, sewage systems, nutrition, and advanced pharmaceutical research (e.g., antiretroviral therapy for HIV).
• The Paradox: Wealth transitions populations from Stage 2 (receding pandemics) to Stage 4 (delayed degenerative diseases), but creates high rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.

💡 2. Environmental & Physical Factors

Focus: Physical limits vs economic mitigation capacity.

• Climatic Control: Vector-borne diseases (e.g., Malaria, Dengue) require specific physical thresholds (temp 16–32°C, high humidity, standing water).
• Climate Change: Expanding geographical range and altitudinal limits of vectors (e.g., Dengue spreading to temperate zones).
• Evaluation: Physical conditions dictate where vectors can survive, but economic resources determine whether a community can eradicate them (e.g., US eradicated malaria in 1951; sub-Saharan Africa still battles it).

💡 3. Globalisation & Connectedness

Focus: How economic flows accelerate transmission.

• Network Integration: High economic activity drives international business travel, global supply chains, and tourism.
• Diffusion Velocity: SARS-CoV-2 spread rapidly through major global hubs (London, New York, Milan) before penetrating peripheral, poorer rural areas.
• Evaluation: Economic connectivity acts as a disease vector itself, undermining the protective barrier of national wealth.

💡 4. Political Decisions & Governance

Focus: Why wealth without governance fails.

• Economic wealth is useless without political willingness to allocate it to public healthcare systems (e.g., contrasting COVID-19 mortality in USA vs New Zealand or Vietnam).
• Roles of supranational bodies (WHO, GAVI) in subsidising vaccines to decouple disease defense from GDP.
• Conflict, corruption, and political instability can dismantle healthcare infrastructure overnight (e.g., resurgence of Polio in Afghanistan/Yemen).

Examiner note: Demonstrates Level 4 by directly naming the geographical model, clearly contrasting LIDC vs AC contexts, and recognising that economic development shifts disease burden rather than simply eliminating it.

Examiner note: Excellent AO2 evaluation. The student uses physical geography concepts precisely (isotherms, vector cycles) but establishes clear relative importance through comparative historical evidence.

❌ What Weak Responses Do

• Treating the essay as a "poverty causes disease" list: Describing dirty water and poor housing in LIDCs for 4 pages without balancing other factors.
• Ignoring Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs): Forgetting that disease includes cancer, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes, which correlate positively with wealth.
• Ignoring the prompt word "Relative": Writing isolated paragraphs on "Economic", then "Physical", then "Political", with zero comparative linking words (e.g., "more decisive than", "heavily mediated by", "fundamental prerequisite").
• Neglecting Scale: Failing to distinguish between personal economic status (poverty/diet) and national economic capacity (state health budgets, sanitation).

🧠 How to Secure Level 4 (Top Band)

• Use Evaluative Signposts: Begin every paragraph with a topic sentence that weighs relative importance rather than just stating a topic.
• Incorporate Contemporary Evidence: Use COVID-19, Ebola (West Africa 2014), or Malaria to demonstrate that high GDP alone does not stop transmission without effective governance and social compliance.
• Form a Nuanced Conclusion: State clearly that economic factors are the underlying foundation that shapes a population's resilience, but physical geography sets the parameters, and political governance decides the effectiveness of interventions.

Check off these criteria across your essay to ensure full coverage of the mark scheme:

1. Conceptual Framework: Have you referenced Omran's Epidemiological Transition Model (ETM)?
2. Disease Balance: Have you evaluated both communicable (malaria, cholera, COVID-19) and non-communicable diseases (CVD, lung cancer, type 2 diabetes)?
3. Comparative Drivers: Have you contrasted economic wealth with physical factors (climate, topography), cultural factors (diet, religious burial customs, vaccine hesitancy), and political governance?
4. Multi-Scalar Case Studies: Are your examples specific and contextualised across LIDCs, EDCs, and ACs (e.g., UK, Haiti, DRC, USA)?
5. Substantiated Conclusion: Does your final judgement directly answer the question of relative importance rather than just repeating previous points?