Health services for health promotion and disease prevention

The importance of social and environmental factors in determining the health status of a population provides the context for the role of health services in health promotion and disease prevention. Health service providers play important roles as advocates, leaders, and partners in disease prevention and health promotion strategies. The initial sections of this chapter discuss the definition of prevention, levels of prevention, and the place of population-wide and high-risk approaches. It then discusses some of the public health skills that are required in prevention programmes, including assessing needs and priorities, evidence of effectiveness, the role of behavioural and implementation sciences, and the importance of evaluation. The chapter illustrates these principles using examples from communicable and non-communicable disease control.