Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Strategies: The Possible Side Effects of Their Good Intentions

Abstract

The public health policies are principally implemented using two main strategies, namely, the population strategy and the high-risk strategy. The purpose of this article is to discuss possible side effects of the good intentions of these two main strategies. The discussions herein are made based on our perspectives and literature study methodology. Main findings portray that the disease prevention and health strategies are applied on a skewed basis, and more so, they are mainly based on medical culture and take little account of human culture. This implies that in order for individuals to comply with the health authorities’ demands, they must give up their own lifestyle coping-strategies that are contradictive to the demands. Hence, the possible side effects of the disease prevention and health promotion strategies’ good intentions; as the strategies have no explicit mandate to change the cultural norms and values. Therefore, we argue that adaptations to make the strategies more inclusive may promote public healthcare in the sense that it can work for everyone’s lifestyle, as individuals can easily take healthy actions in the normal course of their lives.