Health promotion and disease prevention

02Health Promo Disease Preve ti n &on tion

Health Promotion

Health promotion is the process that tackles fundamental causes and determinants of illness, thus enabling people to gain more control over and improve their health. It is a collective effort of individuals, groups, institutions, and communities to implement various cost-effective social and environmental interventions and strategies to enhance individual and community health and wellbeing. Health promotion has five key elements:

Good Governance Strengthening governance is done by rendering health a key element in all government policies because a wide range of factors outside the health sectors affects health, making health services accessible and feasible.

Health Literacy People should acquire the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to play an active role in strengthening their health, participate in community action for health, and push governments to fulfill their responsibilities.

Healthy Settings Originating from WHO Health for All strategy, The key principles of the Healthy Settings approach are community engagement, partnership, empowerment, and equity.

Social mobilization All societal and personal influences cooperate to raise awareness of and demand for health care and to assist resources and services delivery.

Healthy cities Competent, dedicated leadership is vital to healthy urban planning and the implementation of preventive measures in communities and primary health care facilities.

Disease Prevention

Disease prevention is population-based and individual-based interventions that aim to decrease the burden of diseases and associated risk factors. There are three categories of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary.

ry prevention Intervention that is done before the disease manifest or health effects occur in healthy individuals through:

Routine vaccinations, immunization, and post-exposure prophylaxis after exposure to a communicable disease

Improving lifestyle habits (poor eating habits, tobacco use)

Prohibiting substances use and mandating safe and healthy practices

The provision of information and consultation on behavioral and medical health risks

Nutritional and food supplementation

Oral and dental hygiene education

ry prevention Early detection of disease in its earliest stages through population-based screening programmes, targeting healthy-appearing individuals with subclinical forms of the disease:

Routine screening for major forms of cancer (e.g. mammography)

Regular blood pressure testing

Screening programs for congenital malformations

Preventive drug therapies of proven effectiveness

Provision of chemo-prophylactic agents to control risk factors

Daily, low-dose aspirins and/or diet and exercise programs to prevent further heart attacks or strokes

Modified work to suit injured or ill workers

ry prevention Managing disease after diagnosis to slow or stop disease progression, reduce its severity, soften the impact of ongoing injuries, and help people manage chronic, often-complex health problems, and injuries chemotherapy, rehabilitation, and screening for complications cardiac or stroke rehabilitation programs chronic disease management programs support groups that allow members to exchange strategies for living well and vocational rehabilitation programs to retrain workers for jobs