Prevention and Public Health Terms
Prevention, screening, health risks, epidemiology, and population health. Browse definitions and meanings below.
What is public health?
Public health is concerned with the health of populations rather than of individual patients. It works through prevention, surveillance, vaccination, sanitation, screening programs and policy, and its results are usually counted as illnesses that did not happen, which is why the work is easy to overlook.
Prevention is described in levels, and much of the vocabulary depends on the distinction. Primary prevention stops a condition arising at all. Secondary prevention catches it early through screening, before symptoms. Tertiary prevention limits the damage once it is established. All three are prevention, acting at different moments.
Terms in this topic
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Acitretin is an oral retinoid approved to treat severe psoriasis and also used off label to help reduce new skin cancers in certain transplant recipients.
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A substance being studied in the prevention of breast cancer in women at high risk of breast cancer.
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In cancer prevention clinical trials, a study that focuses on finding out whether actions people take can prevent cancer.
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Actos is the brand name for pioglitazone, an oral medication that improves the body's response to insulin in type 2 diabetes.
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In cancer prevention, a clinical trial that studies whether taking certain medicines, vitamins, minerals, or food supplements can prevent cancer.
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A type of monoclonal antibody being studied in the treatment of multiple myeloma (a cancer that forms in bones) and in the prevention and treatment of bone metastases (cancer that has spread to bone…
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Antiangiogenesis refers to blocking the formation of new blood vessels, a process tumors depend on to grow and spread.
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A substance being studied in the prevention of cancer.
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A shared vocabulary and a numbered ending for breast imaging reports, built so the same words mean the same thing everywhere.
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A medicine grown in living cells rather than built by chemistry, which is why no two batches are truly identical.
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One phrase covering two very different things: a medicine made from living material, and an infectious hazard at work.
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A biological drug is a medication manufactured from living cells or organisms rather than through direct chemical synthesis alone.
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Chemotherapy or radiation therapy given to the central nervous system (CNS) as a preventive treatment.
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In cancer prevention, a clinical trial that studies whether taking certain medicines, vitamins, minerals, or food supplements can prevent cancer.
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Recommendations assembled from the evidence by a panel, written to inform a decision rather than to dictate what happens to any one person.
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Chemotherapy or radiation therapy given to the central nervous system (CNS) as a preventive treatment.
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Chemotherapy or radiation therapy given to the central nervous system (CNS) as a preventive treatment.
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A program of the National Institutes of Health to bring together an independent group of experts to review scientific evidence related to an important public health issue.
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A substance being studied in the prevention of cancer.
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DHEA is a steroid hormone made mainly by the adrenal glands that serves as a building block for testosterone and estrogen.