Chronic Disease Prevention

Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. In fact, 7 out of 10 deaths among Americans each year are from chronic diseases. They not only hurt the individuals affected, but also their friends, family members, and the population as a whole. Chronic disease makes learning and working more difficult, is expensive to treat, and continues to put a strain the current struggling health care system.

Although chronic diseases are among the most common and costly of all health problems, they are also among the most preventable. Prevention encompasses health promotion activities that encourage healthy living, embraces health screenings for early detection of disease, and encourages appropriate self-management of existing diseases. Nearly all efforts contribute to helping people help themselves by making the healthy choice the easy choice - eating healthy, being more physically active, and knowing the important health numbers of blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, body mass index (BMI) and cancer screening. Most of these efforts include one of the following: knowledge and skill building among individuals and health care providers to enable illness prevention; community education through health promotion campaigns to provide information and resources; networking by bringing together groups and individuals for greater impact of combined prevention staff, money and volunteers; and assisting organizations in adopting proven health policies to improve health and safety.

Second only to family, the community is the most important contributor to personal and population health. Our aim is to make the community, as a whole, a healthier place to live, learn, work and play. This requires attention to community design (built environment), community awareness of its role in promoting health, and community norms that make healthy lifestyle choices the easiest choices to make.

The Chronic Disease Prevention program educates to help:

1. People take responsibility for choosing healthy behaviors and monitoring their health
2. The social environment of family, friends, worksites, organizations, and cultures to be supportive of maintaining health
3. The physical and policy environments of neighborhoods, communities, and governments provide services to promote healthy lifestyles

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