Health Promotion And Disease Prevention Essay

Health improvements and cost savings are achievable by providing targeted, evidence-based, and cost-effective health promotion and disease prevention programs that reduce modifiable risk factors, often the cause of costly chronic diseases. Adopting commonsense health practices does not require expensive technology, medication, specialty training, or elaborate treatment facilities. Instituting environmental, policy, and normative interventions, in addition to individual behavior change programs, can shift our thinking about how we pay for health. Employers’ efforts in providing health promotion programs to their workers offer a microcosm of how prevention can lead to population wide risk reduction and cost savings.
Recent articles in Newsweek and the Washington Post, based on research published in the peer-reviewed literature, report that most measures to prevent disease might not save money. Further, they note that according to recent research, the presidential candidates who advocate increased use of preventive services as a cost-saving device are misguided and setting false expectations that prevention can cure the ailing U.S. health care system.
Stepping back, it seems heretical that anyone would be opposed to prevention. Were we not raised with the adage of “an ounce of prevention is

Many years ago, Lester Breslow observed that health is not merely the absence of disease, and health promotion is not the same as disease prevention. Being healthy, Breslow wrote, means “being able to move about freely, enjoy food and sex, feel good, remember things, have family and friends.” Michael O’Donnell more broadly defined health promotion as “the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle. …Lifestyle change can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change behavior and create environments that support good health