Week 11 - Introduction to Medicines & Technology
Session 1 - Primary Health Care, Essential Medicines & Technologies
- Spark Questions
- Session summary and reflection
- Learning Outcome
Spark Questions
Health promotion and disease prevention go hand in hand, and every encounter between a health professional and a patient is an opportunity for health education. The purpose of health promotion is often to affect behaviour change. What do you think are some of the key challenges in achieving a change in behaviour in communities?
Cultural Beliefs and Practices
Lack of Awareness or Misinformation
Socioeconomic Barriers
Resistance to Change
Limited Access to Support
Health Literacy Levels
Environmental Factors
Session summary and reflection
Disease prevention encompasses actions aimed at promoting, preserving, and restoring health while minimizing disability and death. The framework for prevention includes four levels:
- Primordial Prevention: Targets the broad social and environmental factors that increase disease risk by promoting healthy public policies and creating supportive environments to reduce population exposure to health risks
- Primary Prevention: Aims to prevent disease before it occurs by reducing individual exposure to risk factors, using methods like immunization, health education, and lifestyle promotion
- Secondary Prevention: Focuses on early detection and prompt intervention, typically through screening programs, to prevent disease progression in asymptomatic individuals
- Tertiary Prevention: Involves treatment and rehabilitation for those with symptomatic disease to reduce its impact, limit disability, and improve quality of life
Learning Outcome - Defining Health
- Describe the concept of disease prevention.
- Disease prevention encompasses strategies and interventions aimed at reducing the incidence, prevalence, and impact of diseases. It involves proactive measures to protect and promote health, minimizing the risk factors, detecting disease early, and managing existing diseases to prevent complications.
- Identify possible opportunities for prevention along the natural history of disease.
- Before disease onset: Reducing exposure to risk factors (e.g., lifestyle changes).
- Early disease stage: Screening and early diagnosis to prevent progression.
- Advanced disease stage: Managing symptoms and preventing complications.
- Define the levels of prevention (primordial, primary, secondary, and tertiary).
- Primordial prevention: Prevents the emergence of risk factors by targeting social and environmental determinants of health (e.g., policies to reduce pollution).
- Primary prevention: Reduces the likelihood of disease by addressing specific risk factors (e.g., vaccinations, healthy lifestyle promotion).
- Secondary prevention: Aims to detect and treat diseases early to halt or slow progression (e.g., cancer screenings).
- Tertiary prevention: Focuses on managing established disease and preventing complications (e.g., rehabilitation programs).
- Describe at least one primordial, primary and secondary prevention intervention applied in public health.
- Primordial prevention: Establishing policies to reduce air pollution and promote clean energy to decrease respiratory disease risk.
- Primary prevention: Implementing a vaccination program to prevent infectious diseases like measles.
- Secondary prevention: Conducting regular blood pressure screenings in community centers to detect and manage hypertension