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Health promotion

Health promotion and disease prevention are the most important duties of the family doctor. Health promotion is “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health”. Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986).

Health promotion implies the patient takes on the role of the true protagonist in the care of his or her health.  Your family doctor can help you to reach this objective, giving you advice based on updated recommendations according to the scientific evidence available. There are a large number of modifiable factors that may act for or against our health, and to identify them is essential that doctor and patient work together in an empathetic and trusting relationship.

The main objective of the Family Medicine practice is to prevent the appearance of disease by tackling the risk factors (primary prevention) or detecting them in the pre-symptomatic phase through screening or early diagnosis (secondary prevention).

Therefore, at the Family Medicine Consultation, not only a sick patient is treated, but also, the family doctor, considering the personal history collected in the medical record carries out a personalized follow up to prevent the disease or to diagnose it at an early stage, something that substantially improves the prognosis of many pathologies.

Some of the preventive activities carried out in our Family Medicine practice are the following:

• Detection and follow-up of high blood pressure.
• Detection and follow-up of high cholesterol.
• Control carbohydrate intolerance to prevent or delay the development of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.
• Anti-flu and anti-pneumonia vaccination.
• Smoking habits intervention
• Advice on healthy eating
• Advice on physical activity
• Mental health promotion, assessing the patient thoroughly and detecting risk factors for mental illness to monitor them closely and start treatment when necessary.
• Assessment of test results requested in routine check-ups such as ultrasound scans, mammograms, MRI, CT scans.

For example, in a healthy person with a family history of cardiovascular disease, the family doctor will evaluate and monitor the test results regarding cholesterol levels, glycosylated haemoglobin (a marker of Diabetes mellitus), providing advice on healthy habits regarding diet, physical exercise, anti-smoking advice, measuring blood pressure levels in the doctor´s office, and requesting tests according to each patient.

We aim to help you to reach the optimal levels in physical and mental wellbeing to achieve the best possible quality of life, to maintain it for many years to come.

Dra. Cristina Garrido Laguna
GP

December 10, 2021