I never had, until I started thinking about a post on prevention and went to John Last’s Dictionary of Epidemiology to get started. His basic definition is “actions aimed at eradicating, eliminating, or minimizing the impact of disease or disability,” and includes primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Last defines primary prevention as “protection of health by personal and communal efforts such as enhancing nutritional status, immunizing against communicable diseases, and eliminating environmental risks such as contaminated water supplies.”
I’ve given a lot of thought to the issue of prevention this spring, especially since writing about the National Prevention Council’s Strategy Framework. In that post, I applauded the Framework’s call for Healthy Environments (such as affordable housing, employment opportunities, efficient transportation, good schools, and effective policing) but cautioned against interest group sidelining of these “Cross-cutting Priorities” in favor of the seven behavior-related “Priority Areas” which are more closely related to the primary prevention definition shown above.
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