Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Newsletter Paper Example

Introduction

Mental and physical health is necessary for individual and public health. Thus health promotion is the action and energy put in place of public empowerment towards diseases control and advocating for healthy ways of living that tends to reduce the probability for certain diseases from occurring. The activities involved are for the community as a whole with the aim of reduced disease and negative health outcome. There are three main stages of health promotion and prevention that have been used by public health agencies as guidelines, and they take responsibilities according to the health needs of the community.

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Primary Prevention

Primary prevention is the most vital stage towards prevention and a warning to the public concerning the spread and effects of various diseases. It is, therefore, the role of public health agencies to create programs to be the platforms through which they create awareness. Normally, primary prevention is all about the plans and actions that have been plotted towards health promotion and improvements. The agencies have a role to play through educating members of the public on the essence of healthy living and the purpose of preventing diseases ("Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion | State Public Health | ASTHO"). Education can be done in many ways where the agencies can choose to do it through health campaigns, banners, newsletters or even home visits if possible. Having the medical knowledge about how to be safe, the public health is so much aware of how to avoid diseases.

This class of the primary prevention has further been broken down to universal, selective and indicated. The universal primary intervention is one that purposes to deal with the whole population that is not specified as targets in the risk factors. In the case of indicated prevention, the targets persons who are at increased risk and exposure to getting diseases as compared to other members of the population ("Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: How Integrative Medicine Fits"). The last one, selective prevention is all about people who are at risk of getting a disorder and have some various minimal signs of having a disorder though they do not have the full signs of being diagnosed with that specific disorder.

This level of prevention works equally good for the community at large and for persons as individuals too which is done to develop resistance to the agents or to make the environment less conducive for the agents. Primary prevention should be built and fuelled towards capacity building. The public health programs have responsibilities towards health promotion which include:

• Vaccination. This is a recognized way through which an antigenic material to persons who are at risk of being infected by a certain disease. This acts as a preventative measure where immune systems of the vaccinated persons are forced to develop immunity against the pathogens of the disease e.g. vaccination against polio is to prepare the vaccinated person to fight polio pathogens in case of future occurrence.
• Creating awareness. This is to equip members of the public with knowledge and necessary measures to prevent infectious diseases. E.g. it has highly been campaigned by health agencies that use of condoms can help to reduce the rate at which HIV/AIDS is spreading since there is no cure.

Secondary Prevention

At this level, the main activities towards disease prevention revolve around early detection of diseases among certain populations. In the past few years, quite a large number of people have been dying of diseases which can be treated and thus there is a need for early detection. Although secondary prevention is an important aspect, it is of limited value since it might not be of any help if the issues detected are delayed and are not worked on as soon as may be required. We can always wait upon free check-ups because they are never regular and cannot be predicted ("From Disease Prevention to Health Promotion"). Thus it is important to have regular check-ups just in case something abnormal comes up, it is detected at an early stage, and curative measures are taken before it is too late.

Secondary prevention practices include:

• Population-based screening. These are programs geared towards detection of diseases at their early stages. E.g. free cancer screen that helps those who have cancers developing to get fast treatment before it grows beyond cure.
• Maternal education and child health programs. Doctors to equip mothers with the knowledge of to raise their children healthily commonly use this method e.g. mothers infected with AIDS are warned of the dangers of breastfeeding their babies after six months as it exposes them to higher risks of being infected.

Tertiary prevention

This is the level where the programs focus on people who are already affected and works to ease the impacts of diseases on those who are infected and the affected as well. Normally, activities that can be associated with treatment for the disease and rehabilitation for the affected are classified under the tertiary level. The main goal for tertiary prevention is always set to improve life quality through various ways like limiting and reducing their disability. Through the achievement of tertiary prevention, it has been seen that it is somehow possible to slow down the natural cause of various progressive diseases. In cases of diabetes, insulin is so much used and acts as a hormone to regulate levels of body sugars in body systems of diabetic persons. The roles of public health agencies at this level include:

• Support for those infected/affected. The programs avail aid that may be necessary to those affected or infected. E.g. provision of ARVs is a way of supporting those who suffer from AIDS, which help their immunities, and relieves the financial burdens on their caregivers.
• Counseling and education. This is meant to assist the infected to face life positively and to ensure that they never lose their self-esteem. Those around the infected are also included in such programs. E.g. caregivers to persons living with AIDS are advised not to set apart the infected to save them the stigmatization.

Other Activities

Other than the roles of the health agencies, people have personal responsibilities at individual levels to promote good health and prevent diseases as well. Medical advisors will advise their clients to engage themselves in regular physical exercises ("Health Promotion and Disease Prevention - The Aging Population in the Twenty-First Century - NCBI Bookshelf"). This helps especially in combating heart issues and other diseases like high blood pressure.

It is advisable to avoid smoking and use of other drugs because it increases the chances of one getting diseases like lung cancer.

To control diseases that already exist, people are advised to accept their conditions, and if the diseases are transferable, they should avoid engaging in activities that might spread diseases to those who are not infected. For example in the case of HIV/AIDS, those who are already living with the disease should use control measures like avoid sharing sharp cutting and piercing objects to avoid the spread. In conclusion, it is everyone's responsibility to stay safe and promote healthy living; it is not always about public health agencies.

Works Cited

About. "Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Through Population-based Interventions, Including Action to Address Social Determinants and Health Inequity | Public Health Functions | About WHO." WHO EMRO, 1 Feb. 2015, www.emro.who.int/about-who/public-health-functions/health-promotion-disease-prevention.html.

"Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion | State Public Health | ASTHO." Welcome to ASTHO, www.astho.org/Programs/Prevention/Chronic-Disease-Prevention-and-Health-Promotion/.

"Defining Health Promotion and Disease Prevention - RHIhub Toolkit." Rural Health Information Hub, www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits/health-promotion/1/definition.

"Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: How Integrative Medicine Fits." PubMed Central (PMC), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615581/.

"From Disease Prevention to Health Promotion." The JAMA Network | Home of JAMA and the Specialty Journals of the American Medical Association, 17 Mar. 1999, jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/189047.

"Health Promotion & Disease Prevention." Maryville Online, 6 July 2017, online.maryville.edu/blog/the-importance-of-health-promotion-and-disease-prevention/.

"Health Promotion and Disease Prevention - The Aging Population in the Twenty-First Century - NCBI Bookshelf." National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK217727/.

"Health Promotion and Disease Prevention." BMC, Research in Progress, 21 May 2013, www.biomedcentral.com/collections/hpanddp.