Preventive care helps detect or prevent serious illnesses and medical problems before they get worse. Annual checkups, vaccines and flu shots, as well as certain tests and screenings, are some examples of preventive care. This is also called routine care. Children need regular dental and well-child check-up2,3 visits to monitor their development and detect health problems early, when they are usually easier to treat.
Services such as screenings, dental checkups and immunizations are key to keeping people of all ages healthy. However, for a variety of reasons, many people don't get the preventive care they need. Barriers include cost, not having a primary care provider, living too far from providers, and lack of knowledge about recommended preventive services4,5.Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death and disability worldwide and are linked to rising health costs. advocates preventive care as part of a population health approach and includes both preventive clinical services and screening.
Identifying and preventing potential subsequent problems is a strategy to control utilization and improve health outcomes. Preventive medical care, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purpose of disease prevention. Illness and disability are affected by environmental factors, genetic predisposition, disease agents, and lifestyle choices, and are dynamic processes that begin before people realize they are affected. Disease prevention is based on anticipatory actions that can be classified as primary, primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.
The evaluation process is the combined responsibility of the individual and his/her health care providers, with an emphasis on patient participation. Prevention is to deter the development of a disease or to stop the progression of a disease that has already begun. The concept of primary prevention has been created much more recently, in connection with new advances in molecular biology in the last fifty years, more particularly in epigenetics, which point to the paramount importance of environmental conditions, both physical and affective, in the organism during its fetal life and in the newborn born, or the so-called primitive period of life. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has a major influence on the provision of preventive care services, although it is currently under intense scrutiny and review by the new administration.
The health benefits of preventive care measures can be described in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) saved. Secondary prevention deals with latent diseases and attempts to prevent an asymptomatic disease from progressing to a symptomatic disease. Many argue that preventive measures only cost less than future treatment when the proportion of the population who would get sick in the absence of prevention is quite large. However, several of the leading causes of death, or the underlying causes that contribute to early death, may not be included as preventable causes of death.
Examples of primary prevention initiatives include improving sanitation, promoting healthy lifestyles in childhood, and developing green energy approaches. A study from the 1970s showed that preventing heart attacks by treating high blood pressure early with medication didn't actually save money in the long run. These behaviors are modifiable, and public health and prevention efforts could make a difference in reducing these deaths.
Preventive health care
strategies are described as being implemented at the primary, primary, secondary and tertiary levels of prevention.Preventive care can be a good investment if supported by the evidence base and can drive population health management goals. Goldston (198) notes that these levels could be better described as prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, although the terms primary, secondary and tertiary prevention are still used today. .
