Categories of Prevention Flashcards

Primary Prevention

• Aims to prevent the onset of disease and reduce incidence.
• Involves interventions before evidence of diseases or injuries appears.
• Examples include vaccinations and behavioral changes (e.g., smoking cessation, diet improvements).
• Focuses on removing causative risk factors to protect health, overlapping with health promotion.
• Can target individuals (personalized approaches) or populations (community-wide strategies).
• Individual methods involve direct clinician contact, which can motivate behavior change.
• Community strategies (e.g., mass media campaigns, taxation, public smoking bans) seek to change cultural contexts and support individual efforts.
• Successful programs require identification and modification of at least one modifiable risk factor.

Secondary Prevention

• Focuses on early detection of disease before symptomatic presentation.
• Aims to intervene to slow or stop disease progression (“catch it early”).
• Screening tests are central for identifying serious diseases early on (e.g., Pap tests for cervical cancer, PSA tests for prostate cancer).
• Educates people on recognizing early signs of diseases and appropriate treatment options.
• Effective when diseases have a long latent period that allows for detection before symptoms occur.
• Utilized when primary prevention has failed, emphasizing the need for timely intervention.

Tertiary Prevention

• Involves interventions to halt disease progression and minimize consequences.
• Aims to reduce disability, handicap, and suffering from existing health conditions.
• Focuses on promoting adjustment to irremediable health issues through rehabilitation efforts.
• Expands prevention concepts into clinical medicine to tackle established diseases.