People tend to associate the words “prevention” and “health” with a healthy diet and physical exercise. Although these are clearly aspects of it, prevention is more complex than that. For example, we know that individual factors and people’s social and physical environment determine their ability to be healthy. Being overweight, for example, is dictated by factors such as education level, motivation, the behaviour of friends and relatives, the design of supermarkets, and opportunities for safe and pleasant exercise in the neighbourhood.
Our current healthcare system is under incredible pressure. Think of the fast-growing number of people with lifestyle-related chronical conditions. The social and healthcare costs are also growing steadily and we are facing an imminent shortage of qualified healthcare personnel. Prevention offers an obvious solution to these challenges, and there is no time to waste.
Prevention involves multiple levels. The goal of primary prevention is to make sure that people stay healthy and to prevent disease. Secondary prevention is concerned with early detection of disease in order to start treatment sooner. The goal of tertiary prevention is to limit a disease’s impact.
Research into ways of improving people’s health and reducing differences in health can only be done in dialogue with citizens, social organisation, professionals, and policy-makers. By taking a more cohesive approach to prevention and linking scientific and practice-based insights, we can establish crucial connections. This in turn contributes to the much-needed shift in society from “disease and healthcare” to “health and behaviour”.
At the moment, prevention is propagated by initiatives such as the Interfaculty Prevention Programme, which focuses on establishing connections within and beyond the campus across the entire range of this theme. The final date for this project is currently set in late 2022, but the expectation is that the initiative will be extended, among other things because it acts as one of the focal points of the strategic collaboration between Radboud University and Radboudumc.
Testimonials
Read more from some of the researchers involved with the project:
- Pim Assendelft: 'Prevention is not something you do at your desk or in a consultation room only: you have to be where people live and work!'
- Esther Aarts: 'There's a lot of potential for prevention in dementia'
- Ralph Frins: 'Environmental law and health are closely related'
- Inge Stortenbeker: 'With our language studies we contribute to prevention by promoting early detection of cancer'
- Baukje van den Heuvel: 'I believe that improving health should be an integral part of disease treatment'
- Hans Schilderman: 'Meaning making – orientation on values, beliefs, and life goals – may be an unsuspected aspect of prevention, but one that we clearly need to investigate further.'
