Prevention is one of the most important aspects to stay healthy and fit in the long term. The term prevention comes from the Latin word praevenire, which means something like thwart or prevent. In the context of health care, this means: With prevention, you prevent diseases or even prevent them completely. Prevention is an umbrella term for specific measures and activities that can avoid illnesses or damage to health, reduce the risk of the illness or delay its occurrence.
You are now asking yourself which preventive measures are right for you and how you can best approach the matter?
Don't worry, in the following blog post, we will explain to you in detail. There are a variety of prevention offers, options, and measures, all of which have the same goal: to strengthen and protect your health. And the best thing is: Your health insurance company supports many of the preventive measures and even subsidizes them. More on that later.
First, let's address the most important question:
What is Prevention? And how does it work?
First of all, you should know that there are four different types of prevention. These depend on the stage of your physical condition. Put simply: the prevention measures can be assigned to one of the four categories according to the point in time at which they are implemented:
Primary prevention: Primary prevention comprises all measures that can prevent or at least slowdown diseases. The aim of primary prevention is to prevent the individual or multiple illnesses. In addition, primary prevention should show the possibilities with which illnesses can be prevented.
Secondary prevention: Secondary prevention comprises all measures aimed at detecting diseases at an early stage and treating them in good time. Secondary prevention, however, is aimed specifically at people who are at risk of an illness but who have not yet broken out. In addition, preventive examinations are part of secondary prevention.
Tertiary prevention: Tertiary prevention refers to all measures that are intended to prevent the progression of a disease. The usual tertiary prevention includes rehabilitation measures or follow-up healing.
Quaternary prevention: The so-called Quaternary prevention includes all avoidable measures in medical care. This includes, for example, over-medicalization or supply.
Another important differentiator of preventive measures is the point at which they start. There are two central differentiating factors here: your individual behavior (behavior prevention) and your individual living conditions (relationship prevention). Behavioral prevention deals with the individual and their personal behavior in relation to their physical well-being. This includes, among other things, all measures that promote one's own health literacy (such as reading this blog post). As the name suggests, behavior prevention aims to minimize risk factors that are dependent on you and your behavior as far as possible.
Relationship prevention is also easy to understand: it takes your individual circumstances into account. This includes, for example, your work, your home environment, or your leisure activities. Your income and your level of education also play a not unimportant role here, as these two factors have a significant impact on your living conditions.
Since you have now got an impression of what prevention actually is, you have surely already got a good impression of why it plays such an important role in your health. In order to consolidate this impression and strengthen it with even more knowledge, we will explain their relevance to you in detail in the next section.
Why is prevention so important?
Diseases can be prevented and prevented through preventive measures, which should have become pretty clear by now. That is why it is also clear why the topic of prevention has such a high priority in our society.
What has not been discussed so far is the following factor: Prevention not only prevents diseases but also enormously lowers the costs of operations and treatments. Our federal government knows that prevention is an important aspect of our society. Therefore, on July 25, 2015, the Federal Ministry of Health enacted the law to strengthen health promotion and prevention. With the Prevention Act, health promotion is to be strengthened directly in the living environment - in daycare centers, schools, at work, and in nursing homes. Improved early diagnosis examinations for children, adolescents, and adults as well as better vaccination protection are further essential efforts.
The main content of the Prevention Act is based on the targeted cooperation between the actors involved in prevention and health promotion. This cooperation includes both statutory pension insurance, long-term care insurance, and private health insurance. The law provides for the further development of existing health and early diagnosis examinations for children, adolescents, and adults.
Prevention with health insurance companies
Many health insurance companies also support preventive measures such as online home training programs or fitness courses. Health insurance companies offer a variety of prevention courses on their homepages. Participants then usually only have to submit a certificate of participation and will then be reimbursed by their health insurance company. With this funding, health insurances pursue the goal of insured persons getting more exercise and being motivated to behave in a health-promoting manner. In most cases, however, it is important that the participants complete the courses in full. Only then will they receive financial support.
Taking important precautionary measures is easy. Most of the time, it only takes a few steps to register for fitness classes or online home exercise programs. Due to the additional financial support, there are usually no or only very low costs for participants. Therefore everyone can opt for prevention offers. And because health is so important, everyone should start taking preventative measures today rather than tomorrow.
Do you have any further questions about prevention? We're here for you to define!
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