Prevention and Risk Terms
Risk factors, prevention strategies, screening concepts, and protective health measures. Browse definitions and meanings below.
What is a risk factor?
A risk factor is any characteristic, exposure or behavior that increases the chance of developing a condition. It is a statement about probability across a population, not a prediction about one person.
The distinction that matters most is that a risk factor is not the same as a cause. Some risk factors can be changed and others, such as age or family history, cannot, which is why prevention is usually described in tiers rather than as a single action.
Terms in this topic
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The same properties that made this mineral useful, its resistance to heat and its needle-like fibers, are what make it hazardous.
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A population statistic borrowed for individual use, which is the root of most complaints about it, including where the category lines fall.
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Classification states that an agent can cause cancer, not that it will, and dose, duration and individual susceptibility all shape the actual risk.
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The invisible region of electric and magnetic force around anything carrying current, from a power line to a phone.
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Energy traveling as waves of electric and magnetic field, from radio at one end of the range to gamma rays at the other.
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A map of who in a family had what and when, and one of the cheapest risk assessments available in any consultation.
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Built from empty shells of the virus coat, so it shows the immune system the right shape while containing no genetic material at all.
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Simple repeated habits such as handwashing and safe food handling block the routes by which infections travel between people and surfaces.
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Grouped by what they are meant to kill rather than by what they are, which is why the class name predicts almost nothing.
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Work done before illness appears, or early enough in its course that far less damage follows.
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Preventive measures, such as vaccines, screening tests, and risk-reducing lifestyle changes, aim to stop a disease from developing rather than treat it afterward.
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Timing is the whole distinction: the same medicine is prophylactic before a problem appears and therapeutic once it has.
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Radiation therapy to the head to reduce the risk that cancer will spread to the brain.
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A protective factor is a characteristic or behavior associated with a lower likelihood of developing a particular disease or health problem.
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Debris lifted by a nuclear explosion and dropped downwind, dangerous largely through isotopes the body mistakes for nutrients and stores.
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Nothing about the gas can be sensed, so the only way to learn whether a building holds it is to measure the air.
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A statistical association, not a verdict: having one changes the odds without settling what will happen to any individual person.
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A number describing how much more ultraviolet skin can take before burning, measured under laboratory conditions almost nobody reproduces.
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A rehearsal for an infection the body has never met, arranged so that the real encounter is answered from memory.