Unit 5: Lesson 2: Preventative Medicine

Lesson 2: Preventative Medicine 

Lesson 2: Preventative Medicine

As people strive for optimal wellness in each of the dimensions of health, they often turn to preventative medicine to prevent disease and illness or to reduce the effects of an illness. Preventive medicine focuses on the health of individuals and communities, aiming to promote health and wellness and prevent disease and illness. While individuals cannot control all aspects of their health, such as their genetics, there are behaviors and practices that they can adopt to help make them healthier.

There are several ways to categorize preventative medicine or healthcare depending on the level of analysis or focus. Health science scholars have identified four different levels of preventive medicine corresponding to the presence or absence of disease.

• Primary prevention is practices and medicine designed to prevent diseases or illnesses. This includes health promotion programs encouraging individuals to exercise, eat right, and adopt healthy behaviors.
• Secondary prevention involves treatment for the early onset of diseases to prevent them from becoming worse or deadly for the patient.
• Tertiary prevention is a treatment intended to reduce adverse complications and symptoms and restore function in the presence of existing diseases.
• Quaternary prevention includes methods used to prevent the overtreatment or overmedication of patients in the healthcare system. In other words, it aims to prevent 'unnecessary or excessive interventions' by healthcare professionals.

Preventative medicine can also be discussed in terms of the number of individuals involved in the intervention.

• Universal prevention involves the whole population. This type of prevention is used to give all members of the population information about a disease or an unhealthy habit to encourage excellent health. The messages are not focused on those at a higher risk for the disease or who have been screened for it. For instance, public service announcements and ads that aim to reduce alcohol, tobacco, or drug use are examples of universal prevention methods.
• Selective prevention involves a selective group of people, such as individuals at risk for a particular health problem. These prevention methods may also separate the populations into smaller groups by age, sex, economic status, etc. For example, some substance abuse prevention programs focus on drug use in recreational settings. Others may target university students.
• Indicated prevention is screening of those who show early signs of a disease or substance abuse problem. For example, screening teens for substance abuse issues might focus on falling grades, conduct issues, or problems with parents and peers.

Some health science professionals focus exclusively on preventative medicine. They may be involved in improving public safety through inspections and regulations relating to pests and food safety. Others may focus on educating the public about diseases and how to prevent them. For example, many nonprofit health organizations, such as the American Heart Association, have prevention programs designed to encourage people to reduce their risk of heart disease through their behaviors (eating healthy, exercising, etc.) and by getting health check-ups to detect any problems early on.