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RUNNING HEAD: PREVENTION. HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION

Prevention, Health Education, and Health Promotion

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RUNNING HEAD: PREVENTION. HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION

The art of preventing diseases, promoting human health as well as prolonging life
through efforts and informed choices of the society is what is referred to as public health. The
basis of public health entails analyzing the threats and the health of a given population. The term
health, in this case, takes in to account the mental, physical and social well-being kind of health.
Public health aims at improving life quality by prevention and treatment of all kinds of diseases.
This is achieved through surveillance of cases as well as health indicators. Some of the public
health initiatives that we are quite familiar with involve hand washing activities, condom
distribution in a bid to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, suicide prevention etc.
making health care facilities easily accessible to patients is also quite important as it could save
lives too. Unfortunately, some of these, are not available to some of the developing countries as
they are still coming up.
Prevention, health promotion, and health education are three quite different but very
important terms in the public health sector. Prevention, in this case, involves disease prevention
which is mainly aimed at minimizing diseases’ burden as well as the associated risk factors.
There are two types of prevention which are;
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Primary prevention. This refers to actions which are aimed at the avoidance of a disease
manifestation. Some of these activities are;
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Vaccination of both children and adults when necessary.

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Including diseases prevention programs e.g. access to services such as counseling.

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Oral and dental hygiene services and education.

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Food supplementation etc.

RUNNING HEAD: PREVENTION. HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION
•

Secondary prevention. This, on the other hand, refers to dealing with an early disease
detection which improves the positive health outcome chance. It could entail activities
like ;
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Maternal and child health programs provided in healthcare facilities.

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Population-based screening programs

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Chemoprophylactic agents' provision to control risk factors.

However, while primary prevention may be implemented independently, it is not the case for
secondary prevention. Wellness is the attitude and the active decisions made by an individual
which contributes to a positive outcome on the health behavior and is related to disease
prevention. Disease prevention is an important aspect in our day to day lives as it helps save
lives, finances, as well as save us the agony when the disease comes because this is a way of
trying to keep away the disease. Giving information to the public, therefore, is a very huge and
successful measure taken upon by the public health department in ensuring lives are not at risk
since people are aware of the dangers that face them and can avoid being caught up in situations.
It is therefore advisable to the members of the public to ensure they have their vaccinations taken
and follow the instructions given by health practitioners for their own good.
Health promotion, on the other hand, is the process which involves empowering people to
increase their health control by having healthy behaviors and living a healthy life. Usually, health
promotion tends to address behavioral risk factors. It includes activities for populations at a
higher risk of negative health outcomes. Some of these risk factors involve tobacco smoking,
mental health, drug abuse control, sexual health, not to forget obesity. It is important we
characterize health promotion services as those which are dependent on intersectoral actions.
Health promotion focuses on empowering individuals to choose healthy lifestyles. However, this

RUNNING HEAD: PREVENTION. HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION
has everything to do with individual choices. The only role that healthcare providers play is by
providing information to the public. Health promotion can be relayed to the public through
several means which include the following;
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Teaching especially to the youths about the danger of alcohol, tobacco and drug use. This
focuses on prevention as well of the diseases that come in handy when one exposes
themselves to using drugs.

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Developing community programs and sharing information. This has played a great role
so far as it gives one a boost of confidence and helps people who are for example ba...