Grand Canyon University Health Promotion Levels Discussion Responses There are three levels of health promotion called primary, secondary and tertiary. Pri

Grand Canyon University Health Promotion Levels Discussion Responses There are three levels of health promotion called primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary health promotion focuses on prevention before a health issue can arise. Things like diet and exercise and getting immunized. Keeping the body as healthy as possible in order to fight off unwanted illnesses and injury. Secondary health promotion is focused on early treatments and working on giving the patient medical care to increase their level of function and improving proper health screenings. Tertiary health promotion aims to lessen the long-term effects from chronic illnesses. (Ali & Katz, 2015). All three of these are considered a way to approach the promotion of health. Depending on the patient’s medical history is which approach you would take.

Deciding on educational needs of a patient would start with deciding which level of health promotion is needed. For example, a healthy 65-year-old who comes in for an annual physical would benefit from education on getting the pneumonia vaccine especially in times like these when viruses are running rampant. Educating them on how the vaccine helps to prevent an illness from occurring before they get sick would help them make an educated decision in their health. An example of educational needs for secondary health promotion would be a patient who has a mild stroke and explaining the benefits of taking a low dose of aspirin to prevent it from reoccurring. Teaching them how anticoagulation therapy works and the harm that having another stroke would cause as incentive. As for tertiary health promotion, it’s focus of education would be aimed at the long term affects of a disease like diabetes. Diabetes can affect their eye sight and wound healing. Education for them would be on the possibility of losing their sight or even becoming an amputee and how to manage their blood sugar levels and proper diet to aid in wound healing.

Upon reading on these three types of health promotions, there was a fourth one called “Quarternary Prevention”. (Kisling, 2020). This particular health promotion focuses on medical overdosing. An example of this would be women taking hormone replacement therapy after a hysterectomy and increasing their chances of breast cancer in the long run. (Kisling, 2020). Even though the medication may alleviate some unwanted menopausal symptoms, the possibility of increasing their chances of cancer should be highly educated. When the bad out ways the good, education is key and leads to the patient’s right to choose and be the deciding factor.

References:

Ali, A., & Katz, D. L. (2015). Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: How Integrative Medicine Fits. American journal of preventive medicine, 49(5 Suppl 3), S230–S240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2015.07.019

Kisling, L. A. (2020, June 7). Prevention Strategies. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537222/.