L03-primary prevention

Question 1

What is primary prevention the combination of?

Answer 1

educational and environmental supports for actions to improve health

Question 2

What are the three main approaches to primary prevention?

Answer 2

Medical: absence of disease
Behavioural: health as energy, functional ability, and disease-preventing lifestyles
Socio-Economical: connectedness to one’s family/friends/community, being in control
- Consider health problem, principle strategies, who the target is, general approach and who performs it

Question 3

What are the differences between high risk and population methods of primary prevention?

Answer 3

High risk identifies a few members of society and targets them. This will have a large effect on them but will make relatively little difference at the population level.
Population method involves targeting prevention at the whole population to reduce risk in whole community

Question 4

What are the behavioural change theory s at the individual level?

Answer 4

Health belief model (perception of threat and benefits of avoiding it)
Stages of change model (readiness to change model)
theory of planned behaviour (attitudes)

Question 5

What are the behavioural change theory s at the interpersonal level?

Answer 5

Social cognitive theory (= personal factors, environmental factors, human behaviour)

Question 6

What are the main health promotion strategies?

Answer 6

Communication (advertisement)
Education 
Self help
Organisational change
community development
policy development

Question 7

What is the intervention ladder?

Answer 7

There is an intervention ladder, which ranges from eliminating choice to doing nothing
- Choice can be restricted, guided or give incentives/disincentives to choose

Question 8

What is the role of the doctor in primary prevention?

Answer 8

• Role model
• Giving advice - empower to manage chronic conditions
• Ask patients about lifestyle (consider health promotion in all consultations)
• Research
• Advocacy by professional bodies