International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

The main objective of prevention is to avoid diseases by reducing risks that may negatively affect health (→  Health Communication ). The prevention approach complements the health promotion approach. While prevention intends to avoid disease and reduce risks, health promotion focuses on resources that sustain the opportunity of healthy living. Even though the two concepts are sometimes used synonymously, lately the prevention approach has been proffered as independent of the health promotion concept. Both prevention and health promotion aim at a modification of attitudes and behavior by specific communication strategies to raise the empowerment of individuals. The problem is that not all individuals are interested in health-related topics per se. In most cases, information is sought when people are directly or indirectly (e.g., through a family member or friend) concerned with a disease. There exist different typologies of prevention classified by either stages of health or illness or by target audience. For example, some have differentiated between behavioral and/or environmental prevention . While behavioral prevention concentrates on personal factors that influence health-related behaviors of an individual, environmental prevention focuses on factors that are external to the individual, such as living conditions and the opportunities to enact health behaviors such as legislation ... log in or subscribe to read full text