Archives of Preventive Medicine

Preventive medicine is the medical practice designed to avert and avoid disease. Preventive medicine takes a proactive approach to patient care. Preventive medicine includes all measures which limit progression of disease at any stage of its course. A distinction in preventive medicine is usually made between and secondary prevention.

Primary prevention measures are applied to prevent the occurrence of a disease. It comprises the manipulation of man's environment, his water supply, the air he breathes, and also the manipulation of man himself by such measures as immunization against infectious disease.

In secondary prevention, a disease or its complications are halted or averted at any point after the onset of disease. Secondary prevention includes therapy to prevent the spread of disease to non-affected individuals, identification of those in the early stages of a disease process when treatment should be most effective, and lastly the prevention or delay of the consequences of clinically advanced disease by both therapy and rehabilitation.