Overview
Preventive health services are organised interventions delivered to individuals and populations to avert disease, detect conditions early, and limit complications before they cause harm. They are conventionally classified by level: primary prevention reduces the occurrence of disease through immunisation, health education and risk-factor modification; secondary prevention uses screening and check-ups to identify disease at an asymptomatic, more treatable stage; and tertiary prevention manages established conditions to slow progression and preserve function. In practice these services include regular examinations, vaccinations, structured screening, counselling on healthy behaviour, and chronic-disease self-management support, and they are most effective when integrated into accessible primary healthcare. Research in this field examines how preventive provision shapes outcomes across the life course: the relationship between primary-healthcare services and the health-related quality of life of older persons living with non-communicable diseases, the role of health literacy in enabling self-management of long-term conditions such as osteoarthritis, and the methods households use to prevent infections such as malaria in young children. Programme-level evaluation, exemplified by the assessment of tuberculosis control activities, examines how preventive and case-finding strategies perform in real-world systems. Because many illnesses are avoidable or controllable, well-designed preventive services improve population health, reduce downstream demand on curative care, and depend on equitable access, sustained engagement and continuous evaluation of their reach and impact.
Research published in this journal
6 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
Health Literacy and Osteoarthritis Self-Management
Intrauterine Deaths in North-Eastern Hungary with National and International Comparison
Social Work in Psychosocial Crises: Analysis of a Voluntary Psychosocial Counseling Program to Close a Supply Gap in Psychosocial Therapy
Assessment of the Preferred Methods Used by Mothers to Prevent Malaria Infection among Children Under Five Years in the Hohoe Municipality Of Ghana
Performance Assessment of Some Operational Aspects of Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme in Tuberculosis Unit, Nagpur, India
How this research is being cited
The 6 articles above have been cited 22 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
-
2026 · Disability and Rehabilitation
-
Distribution of Arthritis Subtypes Among Adults With Arthritis in the United States, 2017–March 20202025 · Preventing Chronic Disease
-
2025 · Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies
-
2025 · Health Science Reports
-
Distribution of Arthritis Subtypes Among Adults With Arthritis in the United States, 2017–March 20202025 · Preventing Chronic Disease
-
2025 · Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies
-
2025 · Disability and Rehabilitation
-
2023 · Arthritis Care & Research
A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Preventive Health Services, linking to each citing work.