HEALTH PROMOTION

Health Promotion Paper

[Date of Submission]Health Promotion Paper

Introduction

Health promotion can be understood as the application of techniques to foster mental and physical health for the purpose of increasing the duration and quality of human life. It should be noted here that the fundamental concept of quality human health does mean merely the absence of disease but to also maintain a level of energy required to enjoy life. Disease prevention, on the other hand, refers to various activities that are mainly focused on health risk profiling of asymptomatic persons and the adequate employment of different screening and testing techniques for early and timely detection and diagnosis of diseases so that preventive measures can be taken to ensure the timely treatment.

In this regard, therapeutic intervention and educating the patient are acts that have imperative nature. Fundamental principles of disease prevention have their basis upon the scientifically collected evidence that is derived from population studies conducted from time to time. There are several factors that need consideration when attempting to devise health promotion or disease prevention strategies. Screening protocols, for instance, should care for the age, family background, gender, family risk factors. Moreover, these protocols should be flexible with the provision of regular revision and evaluation based upon the emergence of new scientific evidence and other similar factors.

Identification

Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are currently the most common causes of morbidity and leading cause of mortality worldwide. Annually heart disease, accidents stroke, hypertension and similar diseases are responsible for 15.9 million deaths (Asaria, et al., 2007). In United States, as in other countries of American continent, an important shift in the profile of mortality of the population, characterized by the increase in to the deaths caused by CVD has been observed in recent decades. The recent statistics revealed that CVD and hypertension are the some of the major causes of deaths in the population above 40 years of age (Asaria, et al., 2007). This represents that millions of citizens are at the risk of morbidity and mortality due to different CVDs. In the United States, CVDs represent 69% of hospital expenses in recent years and CVDs are responsible for high frequency of hospitalizations (Asaria, et al., 2007). In 2007, there were 1,155,489 international cases of cardiovascular diseases, with global cost of $ 1,466,421,385.12 and a total of 91,182 deaths (Greenberg, et al., 2011).

Changes in patterns of mortality in the population constantly impose new challenges for both managers of health sector and other sectors of governments, whose actions have repercussions on occurrence of these diseases. So there is a need to develop a comprehensive health promotion and disease prevention plan, along with other organizations health programs, with the goal of establishing guidelines and goals for the reorganization the overall health care structure for the purpose of focusing attention to patients with these diseases, from upgrading of primary care professionals, early diagnosis of diabetes and hypertension to referring diagnosed patients to health facilities for treatment and monitoring (Dirks, et ...