Disease Prevention & Health Promotion

What We Do › Disease Prevention & Health Promotion

“Before becoming involved with our AIHA partnership, patient education and outreach in the region left much to be desired. Through our collaboration, though, we learned new approaches to this almost forgotten art.”

Yuri Sukhikh, chief physician of Tomsk Central Rayon Hospital (Tomsk/Bemidji partnership).

In an era when poor lifestyle choices are resulting in swiftly increasing rates of chronic disease, disability, and behavioral health concerns the world over, the age-old adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is more relevant that ever before.

This is especially true in developing and transitioning countries the world over. Russia, for example, has one of the lowest life expectancy rates in all of Europe and cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and accidental injuries or poisoning—all largely preventable causes—account for the vast majority of deaths. This holds true in many countries spanning Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia where the average citizen, especially the older generation, has little or no experience with prevention because the Soviet medical model focused more on curing, rather than avoiding, disease in the first place.

Through its Primary Healthcare and Healthy Communities partnerships, AIHA is working to expand disease prevention and health promotion in Eurasia through a broad range of patient and community education and outreach services. Preventive education on topics such as alcohol and substance abuse, healthful eating habits, dental hygiene, exercise, domestic violence, and safe sex are mainstays of these programs, as are routine screening tests for cancer, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments.

Projects

AIHA’s efforts to improve the scope and availability of high-quality disease prevention and health promotion services are carried out through specific programmatic activities, including:

Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Information Resources

Disseminating accurate, timely information rooted in evidence-based practices and sharing successful models and lessons learned plays an important role in AIHA’s strategy for sustainable healthcare programs. For more information about disease prevention and health promotion, please visit the following links:

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