What Is Preventative Healthcare
Promoting a proactive approach to personal health and wellness
Healthcare is no longer aimed solely at treating illness, but also at illness prevention and reducing the risk for disease or disability where possible. Where physicians and other healthcare providers use diagnostic healthcare – physical examinations, tests and other medical tools – to diagnose an illness, preventative health care adopts lifestyle choices and changes before illness strikes. Screenings are used to pick up the early signs of disease at a time when it can be more easily treated.
Preventative healthcare encourages individuals to play a proactive role in wellness, rather than only reactive after diagnosis – staying healthy is its main aim. Through preventative healthcare, we can maintain or improve our health to live longer, healthier lives.
Understanding Preventative Healthcare
There are three main pillars of preventative healthcare.
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Healthy lifestyle recommendations
Healthcare professionals offer guidance and advice for lifestyle choices that can help keep one healthy and strengthen the immune system to fight diseases. These guidelines may be aimed a one’s age, sex, personal health (both past and current) and family history of illness. Guidelines may also be tailored to a particular life stage, for example, in pregnancy.
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Routine checks and health screenings
An annual health check-up with a primary care physician and health and wellness screenings are advocated to detect early signs of disease. Lifestyle changes, treatment or other interventions can be adopted or commenced for a better prognosis. Some examples of these are wellness screenings for diabetes (blood glucose checks), blood pressure monitoring, cancer screenings, including mammograms, colonoscopies and others. Through medical research, healthcare providers have determined the age when tests should be commenced and how often one should have them. Where advised, health screenings can also be done at various intervals through other provider partners, like a local pharmacy clinic.
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Vaccine and immunisation programmes
These programmes are aimed at preventing serious illness from babyhood, through to the elderly. They have played a key role in reducing the risk for serious illness with some diseases, and in others, completely eradicating them, as in the case of smallpox. Vaccines may be administered once, or several times during childhood, with booster shots into adulthood. Some vaccines must be repeated annually, as with the flu vaccine.
Services Offered By Tshela Healthcare
Tshela Healthcare is a health and wellbeing organisational managed care and consultancy business with a core focus on ‘Improving Health Outcomes Through Preventative Healthcare’. This objective is achieved through various key areas that positively and efficiently support several industries in promoting health and wellbeing. Tshela Healthcare has the ability and capability to run state of the art programmes facilitated by professionally skilled healthcare workers and support teams to ensure optimal and improved health outcomes.
Primary Healthcare Services
Improving healthcare within the corporate environment can have a positive growth impact on individuals and the organisation as a whole. Services include preventative health screenings, health promotion and health education, among others
Employee Health and Wellness
Healthy employees are a company’s top assets. Services include health screenings (onsite biometric screening) and cancer screening (faecal occult blood, prostate-specific antigen and pap smear), executive wellness programmes and corporate wellness days and campaigns
Occupational Health
Tshela partners with organisations to support them with workplace safety. Occupational health services include health risk assessment and medical surveillance programmes (audiometry, spirometry, vision testing and chest x-ray)
Maternity Programmes
Mothers-to-be are provided with supportive telecare and information on their pregnancy and post-natal journey. Those with pregnancy-associated risks are supported in managing these to help reduce any possible complications
Learn more about What We Do
To get involved with preventative healthcare programmes or for bespoke solutions for your company, contact us on 053 712 0016 or contact us here.
Resources: https://medlineplus.gov/; https://www.rmhp.org/; https://www.historyofvaccines.org/; https://www.uptodate.com/
