Disease Transmission and Prevention

3. Preventive healthcare

Preventive healthcare, or prophylaxis, is the application of healthcare measures to prevent diseases. Disease and disability are affected by environmental factors, genetic predisposition, disease agents, and lifestyle choices and are dynamic processes that begin before individuals realize they are affected. Disease prevention relies on anticipatory actions that can be categorized as primal, primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.

Primal and primordial preventions

Primary prevention is health promotion par excellence. New knowledge in molecular biology, in particular epigenetics, points to how much affective as well as physical environment during fetal and newborn life may determine adult health. This way of promoting health consists mainly in providing future parents with pertinent, unbiased information on primal health and supporting them during their child's primal period of life.
Primordial prevention refers to all measures designed to prevent the development of risk factors in the first place, early in life, and even preconception, as Ruth A. Etzel has described it "all population-level actions and measures that inhibit the emergence and establishment of adverse environmental, economic, and social conditions." This could be reducing air pollution or prohibiting endocrine-disrupting chemicals in food-handling equipment and food contact materials.

Primary prevention

Primary prevention consists of traditional health promotion and "specific protection".Health promotion activities include prevention strategies such as health education and lifestyle medicine and are current, non-clinical life choices, such as eating nutritious meals and exercising often, that prevent lifestyle-related medical conditions, improve the quality of life, and create a sense of overall well-being. Preventing disease and creating overall well-being prolongs life expectancy. Health-promotional activities do not target a specific disease or condition but rather promote health and well-being on a very general level. On the other hand, specific protection targets a type or group of diseases and complements the goals of health promotion

Secondary prevention

Secondary prevention deals with latent diseases and attempts to prevent an asymptomatic disease from progressing to symptomatic disease.Certain diseases can be classified as primary or secondary. This depends on definitions of what constitutes a disease, though, in general, primary prevention addresses the root cause of a disease or injury^[ whereas secondary prevention aims to detect and treat a disease early on. Secondary prevention consists of "early diagnosis and prompt treatment" to contain the disease and prevent its spread to other individuals, and "disability limitation" to prevent potential future complications and disabilities from the disease. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment for a syphilis patient would include a course of antibiotics to destroy the pathogen and screening and treatment of any infants born to syphilitic mothers. Disability limitation for syphilitic patients includes continued check-ups on the heart, cerebrospinal fluid, and central nervous system of patients to curb any damaging effects such as blindness or paralysis.

Tertiary prevention

Finally, tertiary prevention attempts to reduce the damage caused by symptomatic disease by focusing on mental, physical, and social rehabilitation. Unlike secondary prevention, which aims to prevent disability, the objective of tertiary prevention is to maximize the remaining capabilities and functions of an already disabled patient. Goals of tertiary prevention include: preventing pain and damage, halting progression and complications from disease, and restoring the health and functions of the individuals affected by disease. For syphilitic patients, rehabilitation includes measures to prevent complete disability from the disease, such as implementing work-place adjustments for the blind and paralyzed or providing counseling to restore normal daily functions to the greatest extent possible.

Attribution: "Preventive healthcare" by Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0