Health
Risks in personal health may be reduced by primary prevention actions that decrease early causes of illness or by secondary prevention actions after a person has clearly measured clinical signs or symptoms recognized as risk factors. Tertiary prevention reduces the negative impact of an already established disease by restoring function and reducing disease-related complications. Ethical medical practice requires careful discussion of risk factors with individual patients to obtain informed consent for secondary and tertiary prevention efforts, whereas public health efforts in primary prevention require education of the entire population at risk. In each case, careful communication about risk factors, likely outcomes and certainty must distinguish between causal events that must be decreased and associated events that may be merely consequences rather than causes.
In epidemiology, the lifetime risk of an effect is the cumulative incidence, also called incidence proportion over an entire lifetime.
Read more about this topic: Risker, Practice Areas
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“Mens sana in men’s sauna, in the flush
Of health and toilets, private and corporal glee,”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)