Definition:
This refers to activities designed to protect patients or other members of the public from actual or potential health threats and their harmful consequences.
OR
They are actions aimed at eradicating, eliminating, or minimizing the impact of disease and disability.

Levels of Disease Prevention Include:

1. Primordial Prevention

This is the prevention of development of risk factors in a population group in which they have not yet appeared.

• Specific attention is given to preventing chronic diseases, and the main intervention is health education, during which the population is discouraged from harmful lifestyles.

Examples of actions of primordial prevention:

• National programs and policies on food and nutrition

• Comprehensive policies for discouraging smoking, alcohol, and drugs

• Promotion of regular physical activity

• Making major healthy lifestyle changes

2. Primary Prevention

Involves actions taken prior to the onset of disease, which remove the possibility that the disease will occur.

• It includes the concept of “positive health”, which encourages achievement and maintenance of an acceptable level of health that enables a person to lead a socially and economically productive life.

Examples of actions of primary prevention include:

• Immunization and seroprophylaxis

• Chemoprophylaxis

• Use of specific nutrients or supplementation

• Control of environmental hazards (e.g., air pollution)

• Health education

• Lifestyle and behavioral changes

3. Secondary Prevention

Involves actions which halt the progress of the disease at its incipient (initial) stage and prevent complications.

Specific interventions include:

• Early diagnosis (e.g., screening tests, breast self-exam, Pap smear test, radiographic examinations)

• Early treatment

• Timely referral

• Therefore, secondary prevention attempts to arrest the disease process, restore health by detecting unrecognized diseases, treat them before irreversible changes take place, and reverse the communicability of infectious diseases.

4. Tertiary Prevention

Involves all measures available to reduce or limit impairments and disabilities and to promote the patient’s adjustment to irremediable conditions.

• It is used when the disease process has advanced beyond its early stages.

It involves:

• Disability limitation

• Rehabilitation